David Leventi photographs the interiors of world famous opera houses, capturing the ornate design of the architecture found inside. Using 4×5″ and 8×10″ Arca-Swiss cameras, Leventi captures each opera house from the vantage of an operatic singer, photographing the space from the very center of the stage.

Leventi is not just aesthetically inspired by the opera houses he photographs, but also holds a familial connection to their structures. He is the son of two architects, and the project was started in remembrance of his grandfather Anton Gutman, a cantor trained after World War II by a famous Danish operatic tenor. Gutman performed for prisoners and officers while interned at a prisoner-of-war camp in the Soviet Union, and Leventi’s photographs are a gesture that aims to examine the spaces he was never able to perform.

Leventi’s photographic process imitates with light what a performer would do with his or her voice, light waves bouncing off of each architectural element and bringing the vast space back to the detailed image. Each photograph captures a view impossible to the naked eye, combing both line-of-sight and periphery imagery to produce images that wrap the viewer in the experience of each world famous theatre. Leventi is not just capturing the depth of the space, but also the extensive history lived within each performance hall.

Leventi received his BFA in Photography from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and is represented by galleries internationally. Leventi’s exhibition “David Leventi: Opera” will open May 7 at Rick Wester Fine Art in New York City, and his first monograph by the same name (published by Damiani) was released this year.