Cynthia Erivo sang “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” The ballerina Tiler Peck moonwalked, on pointe footwear, to a rap by Tariq Trotter. The countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo carried out each elements of a duet from Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” twirling from stage left to stage proper with every character change.

After greater than 20 years of imagining, planning, debating, fund-raising, dropping hope and fund-raising some extra, the Perelman Performing Arts Center opened on Thursday evening at the World Trade Center web site, which buzzed with politicians, celebrities and benefactors whose contributions allowed the once-foundering mission to be realized.

The first particular person to step onstage for a efficiency at the long-awaited arts establishment was Amanda Gorman, the 25-year-old poet whose civic-minded work has develop into a centerpiece of main occasions since she recited a poem at President Biden’s inauguration.

“We ignite not in the light but in lack thereof,” Gorman mentioned, in a poem that mirrored not simply on the Sept. 11 assaults but in addition to the devastation of the coronavirus pandemic. “For it is in loss that we learn to truly love. In this chaos we have discovered clarity. In our suffering we have found solidarity.”

New York’s civic leaders and arts directors have spoken for 20 years of the significance of constructing a haven of inventive creation on a web site that had develop into synonymous with tragedy and dying.

“Here, on this very site, where so much loss and devastation took place,” mentioned Michael R. Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor who’s chairman of the establishment’s board, “the arts will bring a special sense of hope for the future.”

Various concepts for the area percolated and fizzled for years, till Ronald O. Perelman, the billionaire businessman whom the constructing is called after, jump-started the mission with a $75 million donation. It was Mr. Bloomberg who brought the project to fruition, contributing the most important portion of cash: $130 million.

Although it’s Mr. Perelman’s identify on the constructing, Mr. Bloomberg was at the middle of a lot consideration Thursday evening, posing with benefactors and celebrities like Michael Douglas and Liev Schreiber on a crimson carpet at a cocktail hour earlier than the efficiency, the place friends sipped champagne and ate miniature cheeseburgers and pigs in blankets.

Onstage, Mr. Perelman acknowledged Mr. Bloomberg’s outsized function, in addition to the unexpectedly steep price to assemble the constructing, designed by the architect Joshua Ramus.

“When this project started, the concept was about a $150 to $200 million cost; it ended up at about $500 million,” Mr. Perelman mentioned. “And the shortfall was filled in almost entirely by our mayor.”

Ensconced within the marble-clad, cube-shaped building, which took on an amber glow with the setting solar, the gala’s foremost occasion featured a program that included the Beninese singer Angélique Kidjo alongside the Native American dancer Supaman; Tori Kelly singing with elementary college college students from Staten Island, a short stand-up set from Whoopi Goldberg, and to shut out the evening, a number of songs from James Taylor.

Many of the presenters had been native New Yorkers who touched on their childhoods rising up within the metropolis, together with John Leguizamo, the actress Rosario Dawson and the Broadway performer Javier Muñoz. (The occasion had a few opening evening technical glitches: Ms. Gorman’s poem disappeared briefly from her teleprompter, and Mr. Taylor commented that his earpiece was not working.)

The performing arts middle opens to the general public on Tuesday with a live performance that includes performers from across the nation and world who all take into account New York their “artistic home,” together with the multidisciplinary performer Laurie Anderson and the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Raven Chacon.

“There has been a lot of dedication and resilience in making sure this project was seen all the way through,” mentioned Khady Kamara, the middle’s government director.

Bill Rauch, the middle’s inventive director, mentioned that as a result of the individuals who died within the Sept. 11 assaults had been from greater than 90 nations, he views the establishment as having a accountability to be not only a native cultural middle for Lower Manhattan however a world one.

“The goal isn’t just to have an audience,” mentioned Mr. Muñoz, “but to have an audience that looks like New York.”