The Diamond Schmitt / KB ViPS building, with its 2,000 seats, will complement the extant 1,600-seat Mariinsky – completed in 1860 and home to what used to be known as the Imperial Russian Ballet – and the nearby Mariinsky Theatre Concert Hall, which was designed by French architects Xavier Fabre and opened in spring 2007 with room for 1,100 patrons. The completion of the new Mariinsky will result in what some have called St. Petersburg’s equivalent of New York’s Lincoln Center.

The Mariinsky commission derives directly from Toronto’s Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts which Diamond + Schmitt designed, on a $186-million budget, as the home of the Canadian Opera Company and the National Ballet of Canada.

The Mariinsky’s Mr. Gergiev was taken on a tour of the centre by the then-COC artistic director Richard Bradshaw in February, 2007, while visiting as guest conductor for the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. Mr. Gergiev was impressed by the building’s universally admired acoustics and, more importantly perhaps, its practicality –  it was smart, effective, very beautiful and finally, not the most expensive.