MUSIC

Cairo, Egypt, has built itself a new house--for opera, that is. The $40-million structure, built by Japan on a Nile River island as a token of Japanese-Egyptian friendship, includes a main auditorium and two smaller theaters. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and about 1,200 foreign and Egyptian guests watched the gala opening ceremony this week, which featured a mixture of Japanese Kabuki theater, Egyptian songs and the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The new complex replaced a defunct opera house that was built in 1869 to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal but was destroyed by fire in 1971.