Gettin' Cultural in Copenhagen

At the beginning of December the fancy Opera House in Copenhagen had an open house for average folk to check out the building's unique architecture and get cultural. The Opera House was actually a gift to the Danish state and the Royal Family from A.P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation, a 500 million dollar gift! But, as with any giant gift, there was a catch. According to Wikipedia (how else did we learn about things before?) some politicians in Denmark were offended by the private donation, in part because the full cost of the project would be tax deductible, thus virtually forcing the government to buy the building. Gotta love it! Well Møller didn't become the richest Dane by being too easy with his money I will guess.

As the Opera House was in part a gift to the Royal Family it is located directly across the channel from the Royal Palace, and therefore easily accessible for the Queen. Here is the view of the Royal Palace from the Balcony of the Opera House...













Unfortunately the Opera House is not so easy for everyone ELSE to access and created a bit of a nightmare for the Copenhagen transit authorities. We travelled there by a sort of bus-ferry leaving from Nyhavn, much easier than getting there by car or directly by bike.

The inside of the building is quite unique. The whole building is surround by a transparent layer of glass. The opera house itself (where the singers actually perform) is a roundish structure that sits inside the glass sort of like an apple. The "apple" is made out of Danish maple that has been gently bent. You can see the maple in the background of this photo behind a handsome guy in the foreground...


















From the 2nd balcony we had this view of the stage...














Another unique aspect of this building are these georgeous glass structures. I thought there were hanging for Christmas but they are hanging year round (must be a pain to dust those!).


















According the Wikipedia (again) the story of these beautiful globes are as follows, they were "created by the Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. Each lamp consists of a very large number of pieces of glass, which are semipermeable (some light passes, some light reflects) with different permeability from different angles".