The Maryinsky grows.

Despite criticism from local environmentalists and concerned traditionalists, plans are proceeding for the first modern structure to be built in the historic center of Russia's northern capital, St. Petersburg, since the time of the czars.

Coinciding with the 300th anniversary of the City of Peter, Russia's Minister of Culture, Mikhail Shvidkoy, and the Maryinsky's general and artistic director and chief conductor, Valery Gergiev, last year announced the architectural competition for a new building for the Maryinsky Theater, the home of the Kirov Opera and Kirov Ballet. In less than six months an international jury, of which Gergiev was a member, chose French architect Dominique Perrault's gold and marble complex, popularly known as "The Golden Envelope." The competing architects included Arata Isozaki and Mario Botta, known for their designs of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, respectively, and the American architect Eric Owen Moss, whose "garbage bags" were, reportedly, Gergiev's favorite design.

Perrault, who designed France's Bibliotheque Nationale on the left bank of the Seine in celebration of the bicentenary of the French Revolution in 1989, has stated that his imposing and colorful $100 million building will serve to make a "landmark" of the Maryinsky Theatre, which has previously been "left in shadows" by the golden globes and domes of St. Petersburg. "A great opera should he an emblematic building that is visible in the city," Perrault said. "The Golden Envelope is the symbol of all the great monuments of St. Petersburg." Some critics, however, see the project, which will be finished in 2007, as shattering to the harmony and stylistic unity of the nineteenth century buildings in the area.

Situated opposite Albert Cavos' 1860 pale green and white Maryinsky Theater, which is across the Kryukov Canal, the two buildings, henceforth known as Maryinsky I and II, will he connected with a telescoping catwalk coining out of the golden shell and "plugging into" the historical facade on the other side of the canal. The catwalk will be used both for visitor access to the theater and for moving scenery between the two buildings.

Maryinsky II, which will be built in black marble and covered by a huge, translucent casing of gold-colored glass, will increase the space available to the Maryinsky by 48,000 square yards. It features a new 2,000-seat red and gold auditorium, a grand public restaurant, a public foyer and huge backstage area with new rehearsal spaces and dressing rooms for both the opera and the ballet.