The Winspear Opera House, currently under heavy construction, is expected to be the centerpiece of the Dallas Center For Performing Arts.

The Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House in Dallas doesn't open until October, but when you stand in the middle of the loud and unrelenting construction site with Don Winspear, you get a true sense of wonder and awe.

"My dad would stand here and go 'wow, but wait a minute, we need to fix that, that's not quite correct, we need an adjustment over there,'" he said.

Don's late father, Bill Winspear, dreamed of a world-class European-style opera house with one of the largest stages in the world. There are some 2,200 seats, magnificent sight lines, impeccable sound, and in the Texas heat, each seat is individually air conditioned.

"It's almost like its own individual air conditioned unit where we supply air conditioning for each person, individually. What that does is provide a nice cloud of perfectly-conditioned air on top of the patrons and we don't have to worry about air conditioning a 100,000 cubic feet of air that's not being used," Winspear said.

Current construction also includes a 40-foot long, 37-foot wide, 300-strand illuminated chandelier that gently hangs over the audience or retracts into a domed ceiling. It uses fiber optics inspired by the Hubble telescope.

The Opera House is covered by 720 individual panels of glass and the glass itself is a multi-national effort. The glass was built in Germany, there is an inner layer manufactured in the United Kingdom, and the frame that holds it together was actually constructed in China.

But it's here, in the middle of construction, where Winspear feels the thrill of what's to come.

It's all going to take place on an enormous stage.

"I've actually got more emotions running through me right now than I have time to put on camera. It is overwhelming seeing not only his vision but the vision of hundreds of people that worked on the project come to fruition and by the way he's here, he's watching," Winspear said.

E-mail gcogill@wfaa.com.