It’s not every day that an architect gets to design an opera house, so there was much excitement in the small town of Wexford, Ireland when the Office of Public Works Architects with London based Keith Williams Architects presided over the preview of the town's shiny new opera building this week. At only €33m, Wexford comes in at just 10% of the cost of Henning Larsens Tegnestue’s Copenhagen Opera House completed in 2004. Wexford is opera, but not as we know it. It is however full of surprises, the first is the entrance. Even when looking for it, many people walk right past the door. No pretentious columns or wide marble stairways, just a few letters over a humble doorway in a row of terraces. This is taking “understated” to new, previously unimaginable heights.