Comments (0) Best Live Theater - 2007

The Ziff Ballet and Opera House

Architect Cesar Pelli's most famous creation may be the Petronas World Trade Center in Kuala Lumpur, for a time the world's two tallest buildings, but the Ziff Ballet and Opera House— one of two major performance venues at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts — may be just as impressive. Thanks to Pelli, and to Russell Johnson of Artec Consultants, the place is a masterpiece of acoustical design. In Florida only Lakeland's Branscomb Auditorium is its equal — and that venue has a vastly less ambitious floor plan. To witness an opera at the Ziff is to hear qualities in the music that no performance at a lesser venue, and certainly no record, would ever lead you to suspect.