Gabion: After Zaha: the intriguing anti-modern Welsh opera house that dare not speak its name 1/4

Text and photos Š Hugh Pearman. Computer graphic of auditorium by Percy Thomas Partnership. An expanded version of the article first published in The Sunday Times, 11th April 2004.

The Wales Millennium Center could be anything at all. From a name like that, you'd probably assume something like a science museum. But no. It is in Cardiff Bay and it is a Ł103m opera house. It will be the home of Welsh National Opera. It has a sponsored partnership with Covent Garden. When it is not doing opera it will be doing musicals, ballet, dance and festivals. Much like many another opera house. Odd that, when it opens in November, its name will not describe its function.

This venture has a long, fraught history. More than a decade ago, a plan was hatched to build a new opera house here. There was an architectural competition in 1994, won by Zaha Hadid. She hadn't built much in those days, and was regarded by some as being dangerously radical, not to mention female. Later the Millennium Commission suffered a violent allergic reaction to Hadid. In Wales, there was an equally toxic local reaction against what was seen to be an elitist design parachuted in by sneering London aesthetes. The Hadid scheme was axed amid uproar. After a cooling-off period, the process was started again. This time it would be Welsh to the core. The supposedly offputting term "opera house" was dropped.