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(30 Aug 2016) LEAD IN Dubai will open its new Opera House on Wednesday. The performance centre is part of a push by the UAE to get more involved in the world of fine arts. STORY-LINE Already filled with towering skyscrapers, Dubai now is moving into soaring arias. The city-state, home to the world's tallest building, is opening the Dubai Opera on Wednesday night, right next door to the spire of the Burj Khalifa. This isn't the first opera house built on the Arabian Peninsula, as Oman opened the Royal Opera House Muscat in 2011. But the arrival of the performance centre comes as part of a greater push by the United Arab Emirates, already home to engineering marvels, into the world of the fine arts. "There's a lot more to come, this is the opera district as much as the Opera House. We are the centre piece, but now we have to start involving ourselves in culture all around us and watch it grow. This is not just a finished work, thank you very much, no more," Dubai Opera's Chief Executive Jasper Hope told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The Dubai Opera architecturally resembles one of the many traditional wooden dhow shipping boats still plying the Dubai Creek. Its glass bow rises up to a point looking out at the dancing Dubai Fountain, a giant glass chandelier resembling a multi-story fishing net hanging down in its lobby. The building sits near the 828-metre (2,717-foot) tall Burj Khalifa and the nearby Dubai Mall in the city-state's chic downtown. Inside, individual air-conditioning vents sit under its 2,000-plus seats to cut down on noise for performances and handle this desert city's boiling summers, which can see temperatures rise beyond 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). Its auditorium can be reconfigured for gala events and other performances. Emaar Properties, which is partially owned by the Dubai government, developed the opera house. It refused to say how much the structure cost when asked by the AP. Those on hand for a dress rehearsal Tuesday of the opera "The Barber of Seville" also stopped journalists and those gathered from taking pictures outside of the building, as migrant workers rushed to finish constructing a set of exterior stairs. The opera will open Wednesday night with a performance by famed Spanish tenor Placido Domingo. "It's a sign of any great city, any great metropolis, to have areas that people recognise as dedicated to particular industries, to particular types of activity and from a live performance sense Dubai doesn't yet have one of those. This can be it," Hope said on Tuesday. The arrival of the Dubai Opera comes amid a greater push in the seven-sheikhdom United Arab Emirates to increase its presence on the global arts stage. In the country's capital, construction continues on the Louvre Abu Dhabi, the forthcoming Emirati branch of the famed Parisian art gallery. A branch of the New York-based Guggenheim Museum also is planned. And in Dubai, a fledging art district has sprung up among the factories and warehouses of its Al Quoz industrial area. However, Abu Dhabi's penchant for franchising existing names in the art world has drawn criticism, while human rights groups have raised concerns about the conditions faced by the migrant workers building them. For the Dubai Opera, it also offers both a new draw for planned Emaar high-rise residential towers downtown, as well as bringing concerts and events out of the cavernous, air-conditioned halls of the city's World Trade Centre. You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/5df2b72c877f7372650a1a4db0c3b2aa Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork