New Taiwan performing arts centre billed as largest in world
KAOHSIUNG, Taiwan — A sprawling complex of four theatres billed as the biggest performing arts centre in the world has opened in southern Taiwan.
The National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts houses a 1,981-seat concert hall, a 2,236-seat opera house, a play house and a recital hall under a single roof covering 3.3 hectares (8.2 acres).
The opening season offers a range of artistic performances. The debut installation opera “Paradise Interrupted” is an international co-production with New York’s Lincoln Center Festival, the Spoleto Festival USA and the Singapore International Festival of Arts. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamel, who conducts in Taiwan for the first time, will perform in the venue’s vineyard-style concert hall.
The centre, which opened last month, was built over eight years at a cost of NT$10.7 billion ($350 million) on the site of a former military barracks in Kaohsiung, a southern city of about 2.8 million people. Residents still call the new centre by the name of the military camp, Weiwyuing.