  The aim of the OPERA experiment is to search for the appearance of the tau
neutrino in the quasi pure muon neutrino beam produced at CERN (CNGS). The
detector, installed in the Gran Sasso underground laboratory 730 km away from
CERN, consists of a lead/emulsion target complemented with electronic
detectors. A report is given on the detector status (construction, data taking
and analysis) and on the first successful 2006 neutrino runs.
