New Danish Opera House is one man’s vision

COPENHAGEN, Denmark —  Seen from the outside, Copenhagen’s new Opera House, with its bubble-faced front gently squeezed by a flat, thin roof, is akin to a giant lantern on the city’s waterfront.

The front lodges a five-story foyer and another bubble, inspired by a conch, covered with golden Danish maple. The main auditorium is coated on the inside with dark maple and has three horseshoe-shaped balconies. It can seat up to 1,700 people.

Besides the main stage, the opera has five side and back stages. Hydraulic machinery can change their size and enlarge the orchestra pit to hold up to 120 musicians.

Maersk Mc-Kinney Moeller, one of Denmark’s wealthiest men, changed his initial sketches for a $231-million concert hall into a monument to Danish design that ended up costing nearly twice as much.

He said it didn’t matter how much it cost to build -- the money was his and not from the government. The Opera House will be inaugurated by Queen Margrethe on Jan. 15.

For decades, the city’s opera buffs, ballet dancers, dramatists, thespians and musicians complained about the lack of space at Copenhagen’s downtown Royal Theater, a structure that dates to 1770. While Denmark, a careful cultivator of the arts, pledged new space, successive governments failed to agree on what and where to build -- and how much to spend on it.

The government’s sole expense will be to run the new opera, which costs $25 million annually.

The 91-year-old Mc-Kinney Moeller, who is said not to be an opera fan, is known for being demanding, meticulous and discreet. He declined numerous requests for an interview, saying through a spokesman that he rarely speaks to the media.

To design the building, Mc-Kinney Moeller picked Henning Larsen, one of Denmark’s leading architects, who created the Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry building in Riyadh, among other projects. For the interior, Mc-Kinney Moeller ordered works from renowned local artists Per Kirkeby, Per Arnoldi, Lars Noerregaard and Olafur Eliasson, who created three huge light balls for the airy foyer.

Bo Wildfang, an aide, said Mc-Kinney Moeller “was thoroughly committed to select the material to be used.” Mc-Kinney Moeller picked German limestone for the exterior walls, smoked oak and Italian marble for the indoor floors, maple to coat the main auditorium and 105,000 sheets of hammered 24-karat gold to adorn its ceiling. The outdoor plaza is Chinese granite.

The benefactor flew to Britain, Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Poland and China in his private jet to see operas, Wildfang said, adding that Mc-Kinney Moeller “has been following the construction very closely.”

The Danish businessman stepped down last year as chairman of the A.P. Moeller-Maersk group, the company founded by his father, but he remains active as senior partner. Mc-Kinney Moeller’s foundation partly owns the group operating Maersk-Sealand shipping company, a shipyard and an airline and holds the rights for oil and gas exploration in Denmark’s North Sea continental shelf.

At first, Mc-Kinney Moeller wanted to donate a new concert hall. But his aides pointed out that the state-funded Royal Theater was more in need of an opera house than another music auditorium. And because the foundation, which had paid for major restoration works across Denmark and is estimated to be worth $6.1 billion, was footing the bill, Mc-Kinney Moeller ruled.

“I am the one who pays; I am the one who decides,” Mc-Kinney Moeller, whose personal fortune is estimated to be $908 million, told the DR-1 television channel in September in the only interview he has given about the Opera House.

Along the way, he decided that the building also should have facilities for ballet. The main stage had to be enlarged so a special floor could be rolled out; extra rooms were added.

Mc-Kinney Moeller also paid for the expertise of British acoustics experts to design the new Opera House, said Michael Christiansen, the Royal Theater’s general manager.

“The result is outstanding,” Christiansen said. “The quality of the performances that will be played in Copenhagen will be lifted considerably. The acoustics and the stage facilities are not just a lot better, they are several light-years better than what we use to have.”

Mc-Kinney Moeller also ordered architect Larsen to add vertical steel bars to his glass bubble, prompting a Danish newspaper to compare the front with the grille of a 1955 Pontiac.

“From the beginning, I said I didn’t want a glass front. It doesn’t age gracefully,” Mc-Kinney Moeller told the television channel.

The final bill for the 49,200-square-yard opera house came to $443 million. The first public show, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Aida,” will be held Jan. 26.

Ballets requiring large orchestra will be staged there. Others will be performed at the Royal Theater’s Old Stage with its red velvet walls, seats and golden balconies, said Louise Pedersen, the opera’s press officer.