Only a handful of buildings around the world are as architecturally and culturally significant as the Sydney Opera House. But what sets it apart from, say, the Taj Mahal and the Great Pyramids of Egypt is that this white-sailed construction caught mid-billow over the waters of Sydney Cove is a working building. Most visitors are surprised to learn it’s not just an opera house, but a full-scale performing-arts complex with five major performance spaces.
The biggest and grandest is the 2,690-seat Concert Hall, which has the best acoustics of any building of its type in the world. Come here to experience opera, chamber music, symphonies, dance, choral performances, and even rock ‘n’ roll. The Opera Theatre is smaller, seating 1,547, and books operas, ballets, and dance. The Drama Theatre, seating 544, and the Playhouse, seating 398, specialize in plays and smaller-scale performances. The Boardwalk, seating 300, is used for dance and experimental music.
The history of the building is as intriguing as the design. The New South Wales Government raised the construction money with a lottery. Danish Architect J?rn Utzon won an international competition to design it. From the start, the project was controversial, with many Sydneysiders believing it was a monstrosity. Following a disagreement, Utzon returned home without ever seeing his finished project. The interior fell victim to a compromise design, which, among other things, left too little space to perform full-scale operas.
And the cost? Initially the project was budgeted at a cool A$7 million (US$5.6 million/UK£2.8 million), but by the time it was finished in 1973 it had cost a staggering A$102 million (US$82 million/UK£41 million), most raised through a series of lotteries. Since then, continual refurbishment and the major task of replacing the asbestos-laden grouting between the hundreds of thousands of white tiles that make up its shell has cost many millions more.