Oslo Opera

Oslo Opera House is the national opera house of Norway, located in the center of Oslo. The theater was built with public funds and is a public institution run by the Norwegian government. It is the site of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet and the Norwegian Academic Opera Theater. It is the largest public building built in Norway since the erection of Nidaros Cathedral (around 1300).

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History

The idea of building an opera house in Oslo was first voiced back in the late 19th century. However, it was only in 1999, after a national debate, that the Norwegian government identified the site of the future theater – the Bjorvik Peninsula in the heart of the Norwegian capital, near the central station and the seaport – and announced a competition for the architectural design. The open international competition received more than two hundred works by architects from all over the world. However, the winner was a Norwegian firm, the architectural firm Snøhetta, which a decade earlier had become famous for its New Library project in Alexandria.

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The construction of the theater lasted 4 years – from 2003 to 2007. The work of the builders was accompanied by the work of archaeologists. Since the location of the opera house used to be a seabed, there was a high probability of finding parts of sunken boats and ships when laying the foundation; archaeological excavations were conducted by specialists from the Norwegian Maritime Museum. The construction budget amounted to NOK 4.5 billion (approximately $700 million). The grand opening of the new theater took place on April 12, 2008, with the participation of King Harald V of Norway, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark, and Finnish President Tarja Halonen.

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In 2008, the Oslo Opera House won an award at the World Architecture Festival in Barcelona. The jury of the competition recognized the theater not only as an architecturally outstanding building, but also as a particularly popular object for Oslo residents and tourists. In 2009, the theater was awarded the Mies van der Rohe Prize for the best architectural work by the European Union.

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Architecture

Snøhetta’s architects’ vision was to build an ultra-modern theater building that would blend seamlessly into the city, the cliffs of Oslo Fjord and the hustle and bustle of the seaport. It was to be a link between the historic center west of Bjorvik and the modern neighborhoods to the east.

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The opera house building comes right up to the very shore of the Oslo Fjord and even steps into the water a little. Its most striking and prominent feature is the large area of exploitable roof sloping towards the water. This roof is made of 36 thousand snow-white stone slabs, which are fitted in such a way that anyone can climb the ramps from the shore to the highest point of the building, from which a magnificent panorama of the city and the bay opens up. The slabs are of varying textures – smooth in low-access areas and roughly embossed where people walk up or down. The Italian marble of which the slabs are made, being a material traditional for sculpture, gives the building monumentality; and the changing inclination of the slabs, together with their different treatments, gives rise to a variable play of light and shadow, enriching the architectural forms with volumetric expression.

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The sloping roof of the theater, descending at an angle to the ground, was a new word in architecture. It quickly gained popularity among citizens and visitors to Oslo. Only in the first eight months after the opening of the theater on it walked 800 thousand people. Skateboarders have also taken to the roof of the theater.

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In the middle of the sloping roof rises a tower, trapezoidal in plan, behind the continuous stained glass glazing of which you can see the foyer of the theater. The 15-meter-high glass facade levels the boundary between the foyer space and the street space and opens up the view from the theater to the bay. The roof is supported by thin V-shaped columns that do not block the view. The tower walls are clad in white aluminum with a convex-curved pattern similar to ancient weaving patterns. As a whole, the snowy white building with its asymmetrical broken forms resembles a huge iceberg that has arrived on the shores of Norway from the cold northern seas.

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Interiors

The theater’s 1,364-seat main auditorium has a classic horseshoe shape for high acoustic performance. The smoothly curving walls of the hall, balconies, and staircases are clad in oak panels. The warm surface of aged Baltic oak creates a contrast to the cold marble exterior surfaces. The hall is illuminated by a spherical chandelier consisting of 800 LEDs, the light of which is refracted in 5,800 handmade glass pendants. Measuring seven meters in diameter and weighing 8.5 tons, the chandelier is the largest in Norway.

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Engineering

The Oslo Opera House’s stage, which is 16 meters wide and 40 meters deep, has become one of the most technically advanced in the world. The stage consists of 16 independent platforms, each of which can rise, tilt, and rotate. In addition, there is a 15-meter turntable, two side stages, a back stage and a 9-meter deep lower level for preparing the scenery to be lifted onto the stage. The stage control mechanisms consist of more than two hundred silent electric and hydraulic actuators. Some parts of the stage equipment are 16 meters below the water level in the bay. A corridor runs through the technical rooms behind the stage, wide enough to allow trucks to drive in to unload directly onto the stage.

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The building’s electricity is partially provided by solar panels with a total area of 300 square meters, located on the south (rear) façade of the building. They are capable of generating up to 20,000 kilowatt hours of electricity per year.

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Opera tours

To get a good sense of Oslo Opera House, it makes sense to join an organized tour. A local guide will take you through the most interesting of the building’s 1,100 rooms and tell you about the architects’ intentions and behind-the-scenes life. Tours in English are held daily at 2 p.m. from mid-April through August and at 2 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the winter season. The cost of the tour is 100 NOK.

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Address and opening hours

Address: Kirsten Flagstads plass, 1.

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Opening hours: the lobby is open from 10:00 to 23:00 Monday through Friday; 11:00 to 23:00 on Saturday and 12:00 to 22:00 on Sunday. Admission to the lobby is free.

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