10 world-class music venues

The creator of this visionary opera house, the Danish architect Jørn Utzon, had to resign before it was finished. Its construction was overshadowed by scandals and skyrocketing costs. It took 14 years before it opened in 1973. The dramatic story is now to be filmed. The opera house was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. Six years of renovation started in May, 2017.

Hamburg's latest landmark opened officially with an inaugural concert on January 11th. Its concert hall is detached from the rest of the building so that no sounds from the port outside can penetrate it. The architects Herzog & de Meuron built a glass structure on top of an old warehouse. It took nearly a decade to complete. Other modern concert halls have also captured worldwide attention.

The buildings rise like giant pebbles ground smooth by the waters of the Pearl River. Many fans of the opera and architecture consider this structure by the Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid to be as groundbreaking for 21st century opera house design as Charles Garnier's Paris Opera was for the 19th century and Jørn Utzon's Sydney Opera House for the 20th.

Surrounded by an artificial lake, the "Giant Egg" or "Water Drop" is in Beijing, not far from Tiananmen Square. The French architect Paul Andreu designed the Chinese national theatre in 1999 as an ellipsoid dome of titanium and glass. Its three performance halls seat a total of 5500 people. Audience members enter through a hallway that runs underneath the lake.

In his home town of Valencia, architect Santiago Calatrava created an entire city for arts and science: the Ciudad de las Artes y de las Ciencias. Here, the opera house stands next to the Oceanographic Aquarium, the planetarium and the science museum. The bold design is dominated by the two steel shells that form the roof. Is it a building or a sculpture? A giant swan or a whale?

This is the home venue of the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra, whose current music director is Gustavo Dudamel. The idea for the stainless steel structure, with its undulating and angled forms, came from Frank Gehry, who presented his building at its opening in 2003 like a "huge flower" to its sponsor, Lillian Disney, Walt Disney's widow. The concert hall is named after the film producer.

Two rounded frames fitted with more than 7000 triangular glass sunshades curve like the backs of beetles over two spaces. The locals call the buildings "the durian," after the spiky tropical fruit. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra regularly plays in the concert hall, which seats 1600. There is a separate 2000-seat theatre for plays and dance performances.

Artist Olafur Eliasson loves light in all its varieties so he designed this building with a facade of honeycombed, partly colored glass building blocks. By day they fracture the light and at night they reflect it colorfully when the building lights up in changing colors like a kaleidoscope. Harpa is the local term for harp as well as the name given to the first month of summer in Iceland.

Seven bridges cross the River Tyne, connecting Gateshead with Newcastle. The Millennium Bridge stretches right over the Sage Gateshead concert hall - which is named after its sponsor. The entire building lights up. Designed by Sir Norman Foster, it was opened in 2004. The music center is open for 16 hours a day, 364 days of the year.

This cultural center in the city of Baku on the Caspian Sea, named after the father of the current president, represents the desire for renewal and modernization in the former Soviet republic. Architect Zaha Hadid designed it in 2007 as a flowing structure amid the monotonous modern high-rise buildings.