Metropolitan Opera House

Stand on the plaza for a moment and listen. Water rises and falls in the fountain behind you. Taxis honk out on Broadway. And ahead, behind five tall arches of pale travertine stone, warm light fills a wall of glass. At night that glass glows gold and red, and you can see people on the grand staircase inside, small against the colour. This is the Metropolitan Opera House, the home of one of the largest opera companies in the world.

The building opened in September 1966. On the first night the company staged a new opera, Antony and Cleopatra, by the American composer Samuel Barber. The soprano Leontyne Price sang Cleopatra. The production was enormous and complicated, and the new stage machinery gave trouble. Critics were not kind to the opera. Still, the evening marked a turning point. After more than eighty years, the Met finally had a modern house built for the work it wanted to do.

That earlier home stood farther downtown, on Broadway near Thirty-Ninth Street. It opened in 1883, and for decades it was the centre of New York's musical life. But it had real problems. Many seats had poor views of the stage. The backstage space was cramped, and scenery sometimes had to sit outside on the street. When the company moved here, the old house was torn down in the late 1960s. Many New Yorkers still remember that loss with some sadness.

The architect of the new house was Wallace K. Harrison. He designed it as the anchor of Lincoln Center, a group of performing arts buildings arranged around this plaza. Look at the shape of the façade. The tall arches are simple and repeated, almost classical, but there is no heavy decoration. Harrison wanted the building to feel grand without looking old-fashioned. The pale stone and the large glass front were meant to invite the public in, even from the street.

Now look through the glass at the two great paintings hanging inside. These are murals by Marc Chagall, the painter born in the Russian Empire who worked for most of his life in France. One is called The Sources of Music. The other is The Triumph of Music. Their colours are strong — one mostly yellow and gold, the other mostly red. Angels, musicians, birds, and dancers float across them, and both are large enough to fill the windows from inside.

Here is something many visitors do not know. During the day, the murals can be difficult to see, because sunlight reflects off the glass. In some hours, curtains also protect them from fading. The best view from the plaza usually comes after dark, when the lobby lights are on. In 2009, during a hard financial period, reports said the company used these murals as security for a bank loan. Even great art can carry a practical job.

Turn around and take in the plaza. The theatre on your left is the home of New York City Ballet. The concert hall on your right is David Geffen Hall, home of the New York Philharmonic. The fountain in the centre is a favourite meeting point before performances. On summer evenings people sit on its edge, and sometimes there is dancing on the plaza itself. It feels like a public square, and that was always the intention.

This ground has a harder history too. Before Lincoln Center was built, the area was part of a neighbourhood called San Juan Hill. It was home to many Black and Puerto Rican families. In the late 1950s, the city cleared the neighbourhood under an urban renewal programme, and thousands of residents had to leave. Some street scenes in the film West Side Story were shot here just before the buildings came down. The arts complex stands on that memory.

If you go inside, the first surprise is the lobby. Curving white staircases sweep upward, covered in deep red carpet. Above them hang the famous chandeliers, made in Vienna and given as a gift from Austria. They look like bursts of crystal, a little like exploding stars. Some people call them the sputnik chandeliers, after the early Soviet satellite. In the auditorium, there is a lovely moment just before the music starts. The chandeliers slowly rise toward the ceiling, and the room goes quiet.

The auditorium itself is red and gold. It seats close to four thousand people, which makes it one of the largest opera houses anywhere. The ceiling carries gold leaf, and the curtain is a heavy gold fabric. Notice the small screens on the back of many seats. These show translations of the words being sung, so the audience can follow the story. Each person can choose whether to turn the screen on, so it does not disturb their neighbours.

What the audience does not see is perhaps the most impressive part. Behind and around the main stage are very large spaces for scenery. Whole sets can be built on moving platforms and rolled into place. This allows the company to perform different operas on different nights, sometimes changing productions within a single day. Hundreds of people work behind the scenes, from carpenters and painters to wig makers and costume makers. The building works like a factory as much as a theatre.

The Met also reaches far beyond these walls. Since 1931, radio broadcasts of Saturday afternoon performances have carried opera into homes across North America and beyond. Since 2006, the company has sent live performances in high definition to cinemas around the world. So a person in a small town far from New York can watch the same performance happening on this stage. For many listeners, this building is a place they know by sound long before they see it.

Before you walk on, step a little to the north side of the plaza. There, in a long reflecting pool, rests a large bronze sculpture by the English artist Henry Moore. Its smooth, rounded shapes sit low in the water. It makes a quiet contrast to the tall arches of the opera house. From the edge of the pool you can see the stone, the glass, and the coloured murals together. It is a good place to pause.

So take one more look at the five arches. Perhaps the lobby lights are on. Perhaps an audience is gathering, or a lone stagehand is crossing the plaza with a coffee. Behind that glass, on most nights of the season, a story will be sung in a language that many in the room do not speak. And still they listen. As you walk away, listen too — to the fountain, the traffic, and the city moving around this building.