Metropolitan Opera House (New York, N.Y.)

The Metropolitan Opera House (also known as The Met) is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Part of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the theater was designed by Wallace K. Harrison. It opened in 1966, replacing the original 1883 Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street. With a seating capacity of approximately 3,800, the house is the largest repertory opera house in the world; Home to the Metropolitan Opera Company, the facility also hosts the American Ballet Theatre in the summer months; The new building officially opened on September 16, 1966; The Met is one of the most technologically advanced stages in the world; When the Metropolitan Opera is on hiatus, the Opera House is home to the annual Spring season of American Ballet Theatre (ABT). It regularly hosts touring opera and ballet companies including the Kirov, Bolshoi, and the La Scala companies. In addition, the Met has presented recitals by Vladimir Horowitz, Renée Fleming, Kathleen Battle, and others. Philip Glass's Einstein on the Beach was staged independently at the Met in 1976. Concerts by Barbra Streisand, The Who, Paul McCartney and others have been successful as well; On display in the lobby, and visible to the outside plaza, are two murals created for the space by Marc Chagall. The south wall holds the work entitled The Triumph of Music while the north wall contains The Sources of Music; The centerpiece of the lobby is an array of eleven "crystal chandeliers resembling constellations with sparkly moons and satellites spraying out in all directions"; the auditorium contains 21 matching chandeliers, the largest of which measures 18 ft (5.5 m) in diameter. The chandeliers were donated by the government of Austria as repayment for American help during the Marshall Plan following World War II, and were designed by Dr. Hans Harald Rath of J. & L. Lobmeyr of Vienna; The lobby also contains sculptures by Aristide Maillol and Wilhelm Lehmbruck;