The Duck Egg, or the National Centre For The Performing Arts, is Beijing’s number one ‘music hall’, a spectacular building in the middle of the city. The Duck Egg covers a music hall, a national opera house and a national theatre under the same roof. With over 200,000 m2, the Duck Egg is one of the largest music halls in the world, if not the largest. The total number of seats is 6,500.
The Duck Egg was designed by French architect Paul Andreu, who is best known for his airports in Paris, the Arab world and Asia; the same Andreu who designed the new arc of triumph, the Grande Arch, in the La Défense district of Paris. In China, Paul Andreu has been a sought-after arch designer since the late 1990s.
The Duck Egg is located right in the center of Beijing, near Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City. Construction began in 1999, but the building was not officially opened until December 2007. The first foreign performer on stage was the Marinsky Opera and Ballet Theatre from St. Petersburg, under the direction of Valery Gergiev, and the audience witnessed, among other things, Borodin’s opera Prince Igor.
The semi-ellipsoidal building is surrounded by an artificial lake and looks like a huge bird’s egg – a duck’s egg – floating in the water. According to a Chinese belief, the universe began from such a vision.
The “futuristic dome” made of titanium and glass is 212 meters long, 144 meters wide and 46 meters high (not a centimeter taller than the nearby Great Palace of the People). The building appears massive and light at the same time. The 22,000-ton roof structure remains upright without internal support. The main entrance to the building is under a moat.
The opera hall in the center of the building can accommodate 2,416 spectators, the orchestra pit for 90 musicians. The stage
moves vertically and 360 degrees widthwise. The concert hall (2,017 seats), intended for large-scale classical music, exudes a refined and serene atmosphere. The 24-meter-wide and 15-meter-deep stage is surrounded by a floor and two curved lofts. The stage can accommodate 120 musicians and a 180-member choir at a time. The organ is the largest in China.
ACOUSTICS OF THE HALLS
There are three halls in the Duck Egg precisely because each purpose – opera, concerts and musical theatre – requires different acoustics. The French CSTB was responsible for the acoustics of the halls. In the first phase, CSTB acousticians assisted the architect with the geometry of the halls in order to achieve the best compromise between acoustics and architectural objectives.
In the second phase, acoustics were studied and tested by simulating how each hall would “sound” with different structural solutions. CSTB’s own EPI DAURE and EBINAUR programs were used for the simulation (reverberation time, dynamics, clarity of sound, intelligibility and openness, etc.). Sound was also studied beforehand using huge prototypes.
Finally, the two-wall technique was applied to the opera hall. The wall that the audience can see is acoustically transparent. The wall hidden behind it is acoustically active (reflective, etc.). The reverberation time of the opera hall is said to be 1.6
seconds.
The wooden walls of the concert hall have been precisely dimensioned (size/shape) so that the hall would have a symmetrical and uniform sound field and a gentle, soft sound. Irregular white plates hanging from the ceiling cover the convex, sound efficiently radiating panels, but at the same time act as diffusers. The reverberation time is 2.2 seconds.
IMPRESSIONS OF THE MUSIC HALL
Inner-Magazines had years ago a chance to visit the Duck Egg for several concerts, and evaluate the acoustics of the concert hall for musical purposes, with such musicians as the pianist virtuoso Lang Lang (a recital concert), the Finnish Chamber Orchestra focusing on music by Sibelius, and Angela Gheorghiu’s gala concert with the local symphony orchestra. The concerts were impressive in view of their musical contents, which impression was emphasized by seats in the front row. On the podium-free stage of the Duck Egg the performers come very near the front row. Angela Gheorghiu’s Mme Butterfly or Forca de Destino heard from the distance of five meters, comes to mind vividly.
Listened from the front row, the impression of the hall’s acoustics was nothing but positive. The sound was wonderfully soft and does not seem to favor one group of instruments over another (bass notes do stand out when sitting in front of the cellos and double basses). The human voice sounded wonderful, so clear and transparent enough to immediately reveal if the performers make mistakes or is out of the tune.
Should you like to visit the Duck Egg, don’t forget to turn off your cell phone or you will get a purple light on your forehead from the stage maids. Perhaps not the most sophisticated gesture, but effective. It is also worth being prepared for the fact that the underground ladies’ and men’s rooms on the ground floor are not easy to find. In general, navigating a large complex is not easy, even though the small signs have been changed into considerably larger ones.
Duck Egg is a project heavily subsidized by the state and the city. The maintenance costs (energy, cleaning) are enormous and 70% of the admission tickets have a price cap so that even ordinary wage earners can hear good music and enjoy the sleek, modern architecture. Information about Duck Egg’s upcoming program can be found here:
All photos by Paul Maurer.
