CULTURE IN COPENHAGEN (2)

This weekend was the second time this year my wife and I have gone for a culture tour to Copenhagen. The visit in April involved a capella Bulgarian choral music and Argentinian tango lessons. This time I was to enjoy my birthday treat of seeing Madame Butterfly at the new opera house.

The Copenhagen Opera House is one of the most modern in the world, having opened only in January 2005. It is a magnificent structure, as it should be, having supposedly cost more than U.S.$500m to build. The acoustics are superb, not least because the auditorium is relatively small, seating about 1,500 people. We had dinner before the performance (very nice) up on the fourth floor balcony, and our table was next to that of Mærsk McKinney Møller. Who he, ask you non-Danes? Well, not only is Mr. Møller Denmark's richest man (his family controls the shipping company A.P.Møller Mærsk), but it was he, who built the opera house, before donating it to the nation. Technically, the money came from his parents' family trust; but he is Chairman of the trust, and he got involved in most of the decisions, both big and small, about how the building should look. At the time, the donation was rather controversial, since many, both inside and outside Denmark, felt that the building of a national opera house should be organised by the state with (eg) an international architectural competition (that feeling was reinforced by the realisation that the fund's gift would be fully tax deductible, so the state was, in effect, paying anyway). However, Mr. Møller is nothing if not influential; and he not only managed to get the Government to accept the gift, complete with his choice of architect, but also to stump up the money for its running costs.

Madame Butterfly, which I have seen before, was terrific. It's hard not to like the music, and with some sumptious singing and orchestral playing, time flew by. I loved my treat.

On the Saturday (yesterday) we visited the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, north of Copenhagen. The museum is set on, and inside, a cliff overlooking the Øresund, the narrow strait between Denmark and Sweden. There are indoor galleries, and a sculpture garden outside. Many famous modern artists - Giacometti, Picasso, Andy Warhol, Henry Moore - are represented.

I have to admit that modern art doesn't do much for me. I liked some animal paintings by an American called Walton Ford, but didn't go for the other special exhibition, by a German called Anselm Kiefer. And with the outdoor sculptures, I was completely lost. We ended up playing a "try-to-guess-the-title-of-the-sculpture" game, but didn't manage to get any right, which was not really surprising. My guess of "an avocado and two coconuts" turned out to be "the concretisation of humanity on an oval structure" or something like that.

Today we took my elder son out to brunch before catching the train home. That wasn't culture as such (though he is a fairly cultured chap). But it certainly required much less mental effort than modern art.

Walter Blotscher