Almost any route through St. Petersburg leads among florid palazzos, their pastel plumage reflected in quiet canals. Founded almost exactly 300 years ago, the city's core is pretty much complete, so it's surprising that one new architectural extravaganza, the 2,000-seat Mariinsky II opera house by Toronto-based Diamond Schmitt Architects, should be so ostentatiously neutral (RECORD, April 2013, page 21). On first encounter you notice only its stolid bulk, that great gray hunk of limestone lurking behind the mint-colored old Mariinsky. At dusk, the eye flits to the relic of a lemon-yellow Neoclassical facade affixed to one flank, then takes in the building's glowing glass hat, and continues through the glass curtain wall to the spectacle inside. There Swarovski crystals drip from the ceiling. A suspended steel staircase ribbons through the atrium like an orange peel. Between acts, patrons bask in the flattering glow from the luminescent wall of polished onyx that wraps the auditorium. The gloss is nice, but this is Russia, and that's kid stuff in the bling department.

This intrusion of soft-core modernism in the heart of the imperial city is troubling, and not just because new buildings here are too rare to waste. Everything about the opera house's architecture is tentative–even the attempt to be self-effacing–yet it's been assigned a formidable role. Russian president Vladimir Putin, whose government footed the $700 million bill, was the first to appear on the stage, neatly tying together the futures of the Mariinsky and Russian opera with that of the nation itself. St. Petersburg has hitched its global brand to culture. Opera and ballet are not elite pleasures but a wellspring of the city's identity. Valery Gergiev, the company's artistic and general director since 1996, is a celebrity of billboard stature, and the new house is the product of his dream.