Oslo’s new opera house
Perfect for singers, swimmers and possibly even rooftop skiers, Oslo’s new opera house is set to make a big splash when it opens in April. Sterling takes a tour with its designer Craig Dykers".
words by Adrian Mourby
Water Music
One of the most remarkable buildings in Scandinavia is due to be unveiled
this spring. The Operaen, Oslo’s new opera house, is unlike any arts complex you’ve
ever seen. Clad in Carrara marble, it looks like a sleek white iceberg melting slowly
into the city’s eastern harbour. “The initial competition called for a monumental
structure,” says the building’s designer, Craig Dykers of architects Snøhetta. “Many
architects interpreted this to mean a very imposing, sculptural edifice. But rather
than sculptural monumentality, we were interested in social monumentality. We
lowered the building profile as much as possible.”
In fact, Dykers didn’t just lower the roofline, he sloped it all the way down into the
waters of Oslofjord. “We took a direct approach to linking the building to the water.
The back of it faces east to the former industrial area. The front faces west to the city.
When it’s finished, there will be a series of parks around the opera house. It will be a
landscape as much as a building, so people will feel welcome to enter it.”
Accessibility has always been a keyword on this project. In August last year the
people of Oslo were invited to test-drive the new opera house but they weren’t taken
inside to check out the acoustics. They came, all 20,000 of them, to stand on the
massive marble ski slope of a roof. One woman told the architects: “I don’t really care
for opera but I hope my daughter has her first kiss up there on that roof.”
Last summer a group of local politicians actually waded out from the roof into
the harbour waters and swam around to demonstrate that the new opera house can
double up as a recreational experience. “The reality is that most people don’t actually
go to the opera,” explains Dykers. “But the city wants an opera house that is a symbol,
so it’s very important to make it open and public.”
Building Norway’s first purpose-built opera house hasn’t come
cheap. Costs are around €445m. No expense has been spared from
the 38,000 pieces of Carrara marble on the exterior to the interiors lined with Baltic oak and a thousand-piece chandelier. There are
individual surtitling screens in each seatback with a choice of eight languages and balconies hand-carved by boatbuilders from
the north-west coast of Norway. “So much money has been spent,” says Hege Hoisaeter,
soprano soloist with Den Norske Opera, the national opera and
ballet company that will take up residence. “I feel a huge
responsibility. This is a big chance for something new; we want
something special to happen in this opera house. But what we all
really want to know, as singers, is what will it sound like?”
One clue to the answer lies in the fact that there are no
carpets in the main auditorium, nor padding on the wooden
armrests. This is not an economy measure. “We requested a long reverberation time,” says Bjorn Simensen, general manager of
Den Norske Opera. “Most of what will be sung will not be in
Norwegian and so it was thought best that sounds should take 1.7
seconds to die away. Our theatre design is by Bosch-Rexroth of
Germany. The company tells me this will be the most modern
stage in the world, at least for the next four years. That’s when
Bosch finishes the New Bolshoi in St Petersburg!”
In common with many modern opera houses, the Oslo Operaen will have three performance spaces: not just a lyric theatre but also a flexible second auditorium that can be adapted for concerts or small-scale operas, plus a ‘black box’ for more experimental works. In keeping with the ethos of a building accessible to everyone, the marble lobby will be open to the public all day long. Here people will find four bars and a restaurant on the harbourside with views south down Oslofjord towards Hovedøya Island.
All that remains to be done is to reroute one of the busiest roads in Norway, the E18, away from the Operaen and into an underwater tunnel. At the moment the 120,000 vehicles that thunder past the opera house every day undermine the idea of accessibility. “By 2010 they will all be in a tunnel under the fjord,” says Simensen. “Then the two halves of the city, east and west, can come together.”
It is this desire to reunite the two parts of a divided city that prompted the Norwegian Labour Party to pour so much money into the Operaen. “The opera house is regarded as a symbol of the central government’s commitment to redeveloping Oslo’s waterfront,” explains Craig Dykers – and there’s no doubt that the project is paying dividends. Already major financial companies and hotels are building around the Operaen on what was, until recently, derelict land.
The Oslo Operaen opens to the public on 12 April with a threehour gala concert. The first opera will be the specially-commissioned Around the World in 80 Days by Norwegian composer Gisle Kverndokk with libretto by Øystein Wiik. Its 13 performances start on 26 April.
For more details see www.operaen.no
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