There will be a home for WNO, a new outpost for the National Museum of Wales as well as other leisure and catering facilities."The driving force remains CBDC who now must work to ensure a new application to the Millennium Commission is made within a tight timescale. "Some 83 per cent of arts funding from the Lottery is allocated to England," added Jones "We are going for a tripartite approach for the project. The theatre will apply for cash from the Millennium Commission, the WNO can apply to the Arts Council as a smaller capital project, and the museum can look to the Heritage Fund."We are back on track with a will to succeed," he notes. "We're designing a skeleton, laying down what the body should be. We'll organise another architectural competition to put the clothes on the body."Alun Michael is optimistic, too. Michael was a Cardiff city councillor when the decision was taken to build St David's Hall, now a leading UK concert hall and home of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales "That boosted Cardiff considerably," he says. "Look at the hotels which opened on the back of the conference business.

There's a similar level of interest from hotels in Cardiff Bay, but those developments and the jobs they will bring depend on the opera house.""Cardiff is a success," he goes on, "but we still have to battle with a lack of vision in the city. A landmark building on the waterfront will make all the difference It's a tragedy the Hadid design did not go ahead. It's the most famous unbuilt building in Wales."The Opera House Trust envisaged the building as a people's theatre, an engine for the talents of performers and artists in Wales. Industry supported that view and were prepared to put money into the project.

Local youngsters saw it as their venture."Sydney, as a city, was an empty space in people's minds until the Opera House was built. We need a similar sort of building in Cardiff for us to make our mark."Hope continues to spring eternal in Cardiff's docklands, however.An announcement, in the latest round of National Lottery arts grants, of a pounds l78,125 handout to the Cardiff Bay Development Corporation to fund a feasibility study into a Millennium Centre for the Arts on the same site as the original Hadid proposal shows there is still breath in what almost became the corpse of the opera house project.According to Freddie Watson, a former consultant to the Cardiff Bay Business Forum, elements of the old scheme will be incorporated into the new project."The centre will include a 2,000-seat music theatre, an IMAX cinema, a new `People and the Sea' museum and the headquarters for Welsh National Opera," he says."We have a great advantage this time, though. The Institute of Welsh Affairs' report confirmed the need for the theatre, thus putting Cardiff into a bigger league. We're not going to organise another international competition but we're designing from the inside out, getting the functions right and working on costs which we think are attainable."We must act quickly, though, as the deadline for the submission of forms for the final round of Millennium Commission grants is 16 September," he warns. "But there is no reason why we should not be open for business on 1 March 2001 And I think we have the support of the Secretary of State. Mrs Bottomley did say ours was a superb site for a Millennium building."That's one box which has already been ticked.". Every country has its cultural signifiers: Japan has kabuki; Italy has opera; France has frogs' legs, and we have fish and chips and the Royal Family.