Winspear Opera House

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The Winspear Opera House will be an Opera House in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas (USA). It will be part of the new Dallas Center for the Performing Arts which is due to open in 2009. It is designed in the classic Italian horseshoe configuration and seats 2,200. It will be the new home of Dallas Opera.

Designed by Foster and Partners, led by Lord Norman Foster (the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate - the architecture equivalent of the Nobel Prize), the Opera's new venue at the Dallas Center was made possible by a $42-million gift from Margot and Bill Winspear, for whom the opera house will be named. Performances are planned to begin during the 2009/2010 season.

It is planned that the Center will become the location for main stage productions of the Dallas Opera, Dallas Theater Center, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Texas Ballet Theater, Anita M. Martinez Ballet Folklorico, and many other performing arts organizations. The London firm Sound Space will develop the acoustical design of the opera house and the acoustics will be engineered specifically for performances of opera and musical theater. However, the stages will be equipped with appropriate flooring for performances of ballet and other forms of dance.