Everything's Up To Date.....

On June 23, I wrote of the pending opening of the Kauffman Center for the Arts in Kansas City.  The Center, with separate auditoria for opera/ballet and the Kansas City Symphony, appears to be everything that its builders promised and more.  Here is proof that the philanthropic efforts of an American city, sometimes down on its luck, can rise above even the worst of economic crises to build something equal to the artistic efforts playing within it, raising the level of the art and artists to even greater heights.

Convention Hall interior, capacity 15,000!

Performing arts facilities in Kansas City have a rather precarious history; the first of these, Convention Hall, burned to the ground a little more than a year after its opening and only a few months before the scheduled Democratic National Convention of 1900.  Demonstrating what would become known as "Kansas City Spirit," it was rebuilt before the July 4 opening of that event.  Unfortunately, the 1922-24 meetings of the Ku Klux Klan at the facility seem to outshine any artistic endeavors that took place there.

The Convention Hall was demolished in in 1936-37 and turned into a parking lots) as part of a WPA project to build the new Municipal Auditorium.  The new building was designed as a multi-purpose facility with a 7300 seat area, 2400 seat music hall, and a "little theater" holding approximately 400.  For 75 years, the Municipal Auditorium served as home for all of the area's major cultural institutions:  orchestra, ballet, and opera.  The original Kansas City Philharmonic was dissolved in its 49th season, following a series of strikes and a general decline of corporate and community funding.  Almost immediately, however a group of local music supporters inaugurated the new Kansas City Symphony in 1982.  Under its new name the symphony moved into the Lyric Theater, originally a 3000-seat Shrine Auditorium.

The Lyric Theater

Founded in 1957, the Kansas City Ballet made the Lyric its home from the beginnings of its history.  Although it has in fact gone through several name changes, including the State Ballet of Missouri, it has returned to its roots (and original name) and appears to be a quite solvent third partner in the Kauffman Center triumvirate.

To say that the new Kauffman Center is stunning is a gross understatement.  Zachary Wolff writes in the New York Times, "From the outside the two theaters are curving inverted ziggurats, pristinely white, that evoke Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum; the stainless-steel cladding on the arched exterior gives off a Frank Gehry vibe. And those nesting arches recall a familiar Australian opera house: when I told someone here that I was in town to see the new performing-arts center, he said, “Oh, the Sydney-looking one?”

Muriel Kauffman Theater

The Muriel Kauffman Theater is an 1800-seat house for the Lyric Opera and Kansas City Ballet.  With a 5000 square feet stage space and an orchestra pit seating 95 musicians it would seem to more than serve the needs of the companies that use it.  Its size also creates a level of intimacy rarely available in theaters much larger (it seems as though 1900 seats is the threshold here).  As operas have almost all taken to the presentation of supertitles for foreign-language works, the Kauffman takes that one step further: offering the new Figaro supertitle system, with personal monitors on each seat back.

Helzberg Hall

Helzberg Hall, a 1600-seat auditorium, is the new home of the Kansas City Symphony.  With a stage that extends a good length into the house, some 40% of the seats are located beside or behind the orchestra.  In fact, the furthest seat is said to be just over 100 feet from the stage.  The designers of the space also did not make any short cuts either as the hall includes a new pipe organ constructed by the renowned Casavant Freres Company, consisting of 79 stops, 102 ranks, and 5,548 pipes.  Would that hall builders/renovators in some of our other great cities had such foresight.

The entire center, which is connected by the Brandmeyer Great Hall, a large glassed-in atrium, is truly a sight to behold.  Placed on a 13-acre campus not far from the city's up and coming downtown, one can easily tell that the late Ms. Kauffman's dream, combined with civic generosity and brilliant architects have created a stunning model for arts facilities.  And, in a reminder to all the sports franchises demanding civic support or else, the Kauffman Center--all $366 million worth--was built solely with private dollars.

Kauffman Center and proximity to downtown

I know that there is fine music being made in this city as I heard the Lyric Opera many years ago in a Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci double bill.  Now, with the construction of this incredible pantheon for all of Kansas City's arts, there is much more reason to travel west (and south).