With CARLA ANDERSON
Jutting into the harbor, the Sydney Opera House, with its shimmering white-shelled roofs, has become one of the world’s leading performing-arts centers as well as a symbol of the city and of Australia. Considered one of the supreme imaginative achievements of the 20th century, its history of bitter quarrels over design and cost is only a memory.
The Sydney Opera House has a past filled with conflict. Planned to take 4 years it took 14.
THE CONFLICT
The New South Wales state government opened a worldwide competition for the opera house’s design in 1957, with Danish architect Joern Utzon, a relative novice at 38, prevailing over 232 other entries.
Neighboring property owners complained that the design would devalue their land, despite the fact that it would be replacing some rather ugly tram sheds. Nearby apartments then worth $50,000 each go for more than $1 million today.
Construction began in 1959 and was expected to be finished in four years at a cost of $5.6 million. When it was finally completed 14 years later, it had cost more than $71 million.
Methods for constructing some of the building’s parts did not exist at the time it was designed. The state premier insisted that digging and concrete pouring be done rapidly for fear that the next premier might stop construction of the building.
Indeed, many delays and cost overruns resulting from design and engineering problems caused a newly elected government of New South Wales to attempt to contain costs and oversee the project’s completion.
In 1966, Utzon resigned in frustration; the government had withheld his office fees and wouldn’t agree to his designs and methods. He vowed never to return to Sydney and quietly burned his drawings in 1968.
A new architectural team was chosen amid great turbulence. Some contributions were made by Eero Saarinen, a noted American architect who designed St. Louis’ Gateway Arch and Stephens College’s Firestone Baars Chapel.
Cashing in on Australians’ love of gambling with a series of lotteries, the opera house was completely paid for by 1975, two years after it was finished.
A renovation was planned but the estimates over a billion dollars so it have been put on hold. The building renovations had been planned to improve access and acoustical defects.
The Sydney Opera House was slated to cost $5.6 million, it ended up costing $71 million.
THE FINISHED BUILDING
The roofs, evoking sails, are covered with more than a million glistening beige and off-white ceramic tiles from Sweden, which have to be regrouted periodically to keep the building waterproof. The highest roof vault is 221 feet above sea level. In the mouths of the roofs and other areas are 67,000 square feet of glass, made in France in two layers, one plain and the other tinted topaz.
The walls, inside and out, are faced with pink granite from New South Wales, which also provided two of the main interior woods - brush box and white birch plywood - creating an attractive look as well as contributing to the fine acoustics.
Presenting more than 3,000 events a year, the Opera House has five main auditoriums, with sometimes five performances at the same time. The largest auditorium is the Concert Hall, seating 2,697 and containing the largest mechanical tracker action organ in the world, with 10,500 pipes. It took 12 years to get the organ to work.
In the Opera Theatre, seating 1,547, we attended a production of "La Traviata." The acoustics were so good that although the singers did not use microphones, we could hear every word.
The Drama Theatre, featuring drama and dance, seats 544. The Playhouse, used for lectures, seminars and plays with small casts, seats 398. The Studio, noted for experimental theater and sometimes genre-defying art forms, seats 364.
The huge windows reflecting the city lights are a unique experience. On Sunday afternoons, free concerts of jazz, classical, folk or rock music are given on one of the forecourts.
The 1,000 rooms in the Opera House cover 4½ acres and include 60 dressing rooms, four restaurants, an Aboriginal artists’ gallery, a library and an arcade of shops.
More than 4.5 million people annually visit this building, with more than 2 million attending the performances and 250,000 taking the behind-the-scenes tours.
A favorite story is from Brett Sheehy, the director of the Sydney Festival. At the end of a show, a 5-year-old girl sitting in front of him said, "Grandma, I love you for bringing me to this. I won’t forget it until I’m grown up, at least." Sheehy wrote, "That experience cost them the price of a couple of bus tickets, and yet it lifted their hearts beautifully. It gets no better than that."
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