Oslo Opera House
The New Opera House in Oslo has been the venue for the Norwegian Opera since April 2008 .
history
The construction of a new opera house in Oslo had been discussed for decades before the first plans for a building made of concrete, marble, glass and wood were published in 1998. After two alternative locations at the former Westbahnhof and in the old Folketeaterbygningen had been discarded, the Norwegian Storting decided on June 15, 1999 that the new opera, similar to the Sydney Opera House, should be built directly on the harbor. The plan is for it to gradually develop into the center of the new Bjørvika district, southeast of Oslo Central Station .
The groundbreaking ceremony on the site of the former Nylands mekaniske Verksted took place on February 17, 2003, the foundation stone was laid in autumn 2004. The building was initially scheduled to be completed in September 2008, but the opening of the building could be brought forward by five months due to the rapid construction work. Construction costs (excluding furnishings) totaled 4.356 billion Norwegian kroner, which at the exchange rate at that time corresponded to around 548 million euros.
architecture
The new opera is considered to be the largest Norwegian cultural project of the post-war period. The building, modeled on a floating iceberg, was designed by the Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta (“Snow Cap”), which had already designed the new library in Alexandria in Egypt . The opera house is 110 meters wide, 207 meters long and has more than 1,100 interior rooms on an area of 38,500 square meters. Of the three playing areas, the main stage is the largest with 1,358 seats for the audience.
The large hall resembles that of the Semperoper in Dresden in terms of shape, size and structure . That was a condition of the client. The interior of the hall is dominated by deeply oiled oak. It houses Norway's largest chandelier, which Snøhetta created in cooperation with Hadeland Glassverk . It is seven meters in diameter and weighs 8.5 tons; 8500 light-emitting diodes provide the light.
The facade of the building consists of 90 percent white Italian Carrara marble and ten percent Norwegian granite , which was quarried in Rennebu . The basic architectural lines received unanimous praise from experts. However, the massive use of the type of marble used is controversial, for which 57 million crowns (around 6.4 million euros) were spent. Even before the opening, a large part of the 36,000 marble slabs had turned a slight yellowish color.
In 2009, the architectural office was awarded the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture for the design of the opera house .
Sculpture in the harbor basin
Since May 2010 the white sculpture Hun ligger / She lies has been in the harbor basin approx. 60 m in front of the opera . The sculpture by the Italian artist Monica Bonvicini , who lives in Berlin, is modeled on the piled-up ice masses in Caspar David Friedrich's painting The Sea of Ice , measures 17 × 16 × 12 m and was made of steel and glass.
opening
The new opera opened on April 12, 2008. The ceremony was broadcast live on Norwegian television and was celebrated across the country as a major cultural event. Chancellor Angela Merkel also came from Germany for the inauguration in front of almost 1400 guests . She watched the action together with King Harald V , Queen Sonja , representatives of the royal houses in Denmark and Sweden and the Prime Ministers from Iceland and Finland as guest of honor. 20 vocal soloists and 60 dancers took part in the opening gala; Excerpts from Richard Wagner's opera Der Fliegende Holländer were performed . Since the complicated stage technology could not be installed in time, the opera In 80 Days Around the World by Norwegian composer Gisle Kverndokk, originally ordered for the opening evening, had to be postponed for more than a year.
Web links
- Norwegian Opera website
- Matthias Hannemann: Big troll wants to pinch, small troll wants to pinch. The new opera house in Oslo , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, May 7, 2007, p. 40.
- Peter Richter: Under the marble cliffs. The new opera house in Oslo , in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, March 16, 2008, p. 29.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Information page of the state institution Statsbygg (Norwegian)
- ↑ About - The Norwegian Opera & Ballet ( Memento of the original from October 14, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Unter den Marmorklippen , Peter Richter for FAZ, March 15, 2008, last accessed in January 2012.
- ↑ Ikke lenger snøhvit ( Memento of the original from November 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Aftenposten, November 24, 2007
- ↑ European Architecture Prize for Norwegians, Kleine Zeitung (Graz), April 29, 2009 ( Memento from September 16, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Scandinavian Opera Gala - Oslo presents its new opera house, dw-world.de, April 10, 2008 ( Memento from December 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Merkel's fashionable coup d'État Der Spiegel, April 13, 2008
Coordinates: 59 ° 54 ' N , 10 ° 45' E