Architect Spencer de Grey inside the new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House in Dallas on Thursday. (Donna McWilliam/Associated Press)Dallas opened its new performing arts district Thursday night, a $354-million-US project that includes a new opera house and theatre.

The 575-seat Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre was designed by Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas and star pupil Joshua Prince-Ramus, who is based in New York.

The 2,200-seat Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House was designed by Britain's Norman Foster and partner Spencer de Grey.

A gala concert Thursday, featuring Richard Wagner's Tannhauser, passed the sound test among opera lovers, with the Dallas Morning News declaring "both solo voices and chorus carried powerfully from the stage."

The first Dallas Opera production of Verdi's Otello opens Oct. 23 and the house will also show ballet and Broadway touring productions.

The Dee and Charles Wyly Theatre that is part of the new Dallas performing arts centre. (Donna McWilliam/Associated Press)The glass building encases a red glass drum surrounding the performance hall and has a solar canopy that provides shade for the park surrounding it and the transparent lobby. The sleek red roof is a striking element.

"It's a response to its place, downtown, the grid, the climate, the big umbrella," Foster said of the building. "It's a statement about Dallas. It is of its place. That, if I had to single one thing out, would be for me, really important."

Inviting from park

The architects say the glass fronts work to invite people in from the surrounding park and the street.

The Wyly Theatre is also surrounded by glass, so passers-by can see the audience file in before a performances. But it is more rough and industrial, with a skin of aluminum tubes and a concrete lobby.

Koolhaas said he sacrificed use of more refined materials to create a flexible theatre space.

At the request of the theatre board, the performance hall can be configured as directors wish because the chairs are not affixed to the floor and the balconies are retractable.

"In the end, the money went into the performance of the building. And I think that was a very conscious choice of the clients, and I really endorse that because it has a wonderful quality of a working environment, almost a factory," Koolhaas said.

The 12-storey building features a "stacked" design with rehearsal spaces on the upper levels, as well as offices and a costume area.

Koolhaas said he considers the design quite experimental and praised Dallas for embracing such wholesale change.

The theatre and opera house are part of a 19-block, 27-hectare arts district, which already includes the Dallas Museum of Art, the Renzo Piano-designed Nasher Sculpture Center, the Trammell and Margaret Crow Collection of Asian Art and the I.M. Pei-designed Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center.

Next year, an outdoor performing arts venue for up to 5,000 people will open and new 750-seat performance hall for smaller productions is planned.

A four-hectare public park designed by landscape architect Michel Desvigne unites the new arts venues.

About $337 million of the total capital budget has been raised.

With files from The Associated Press