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Operaen - Store Scene
Ekvipagemestervej 10, 1438 København
The Opera on Holmen in Copenhagen is Denmark's national opera. It was inaugurated by Queen Margrethe 2. on 15 January 2005. It was designed by the architect Henning Larsen and has Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller as initiator, client and patron.
It houses two stages, Store scene and Takkelloftet. The Opera contains extensive rehearsal rooms, wardrobes and changing rooms. In addition to opera, ballets and concerts are staged.
The Opera is decorated with works by some of the country's leading artists:
The painter and sculptor Per Kirkeby has supplied four bronze reliefs, which adorn the foot of the stage space. All four reliefs show beams, earth, mud, and feet peeping out, as if they were four people buried alive.
The Danish-Icelandic, internationally acclaimed Olafur Eliasson has created three large chandeliers. They each measure three metres in diameter and are fitted with 8000 mirrors and 300 lamps. They glitter even in sunlight. Each one is mounted in the ceiling with five copper tubes in a pentagon.
The Danish designer Per Arnoldi, whom the shipowner Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller asked to be responsible for the colour scheme of the Opera, has designed the Opera's graphic profile and the logo (two O's inside each other), which is both laid into the floor of the foyer and appears in the stage curtain. About the stage curtain Per Arnoldi says: "Facing Kongens Nytorv on top of the Gamle Scene building, the god Apollo is enthroned, with his lyre raised high and triumphantly above his head. In relief on the facade of Stærekassen, likewise facing Kgs. Nytorv, sits Utzon-Frank's elegant Apollo with his lyre. On the curtain of Stærekassen the leader of the muses, the god of art Apollo, lounged on a cloud while listening to a poet's reading. On the Opera's curtain the sky is also the deep blue background. A stylised stage space suggests that we are in the world of the theatre, and the Opera's logo, the building's round red O with art's orange ellipse inside, is on the stage. Apollo is still with us. His lyre, here in the form of the constellation of the southern sky. The lyre floats freely in the stage space. Apollo is in the room ... his lyre shines in the sky."
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