April 11 (Bloomberg) -- An $800 million opera house that seems to slope like an iceberg into the Oslo fjord opens tomorrow.

The Carrara-marble-clad opera house -- Norway's largest cultural building in seven centuries -- aims to revive the industrial waterfront and showcase the country's oil wealth.

King Harald will inaugurate the house with a gala featuring the National Ballet, the National Opera Orchestra and performances of works by Mozart, Wagner, Puccini, Verdi and Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. Guests include German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden.

The white building, which took five years to complete, sits on the bank of the Bjoervika district, near the stock exchange, the central station, crisscrossing highways and harbor containers. It's the centerpiece of an urban development that mimics the revivals of London's South Bank with Tate Modern or Bilbao in Spain with Frank Gehry's Guggenheim. The building's slanted marble roof is accessible to visitors, while planned new offices, flats and museums aim to resuscitate the industrial waterfront.

``The building had to be monumental,'' said Tarald Lundevall, who oversaw the project for Snoehetta, the Oslo-based architectural firm that designed the building. ``We brought in the Scandinavian idea of common ownership and easy accessibility.''

The opera house is the largest cultural building in the nation of 4.7 million people since the Nidarosdomen cathedral in Trondheim in western Norway in the 14th century. The structure is covered in 35,000 marble slabs, boasts more than 1,000 rooms, art valued at 45 million kroner and a chandelier in the main concert hall that consists of 17,000 glass units.

Movie Theater

Until now, the opera in the city of about 560,000 was located in a converted movie theater in downtown Oslo.

While the new opera's design has won acclaim, the development plans for the district have drawn criticism. Culture Minister Trond Giske said erecting buildings too close to the opera would deny the house sufficient breathing space. The cost of the building also has riled politicians, including former Progress Chairman Carl I. Hagen, who has said the money could have been better spent in areas such as healthcare.

Norway, the world's fifth-largest oil and third-largest gas exporter, has benefited from natural resources for almost 40 years. Income from oil has boosted Norway's sovereign wealth fund to 1.97 trillion kroner ($392 billion) and made it the second- largest globally behind the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Norway's economy grew last year at the fastest rate since 1971.

The area around the opera resembles a massive building site, surrounded by containers, rail tracks and roads. The district will be made more accessible by moving the highway into a subsea tunnel. Oslo devised a plan to revive the quarter in 2000. Sale of waterfront properties started in 2003. The overall project will take until 2018 to be completed.

``The opera is at the moment the centerpiece of the development,'' said Kjetil Kleveland, a spokesman for Oslo's City Planning and Building Services department. ``The new opera will be the No. 1 tourist attraction in Oslo for the foreseeable future.''

For more information on the Oslo Opera House, go to http://www.oslooperahouse.com.

To contact the reporter on this story: Meera Bhatia in Oslo at mbhatia2@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 10, 2008 22:37 EDT