Sydney Opera House
July 2018
Operatif organised a tour of the Opera House.
It was an excellent tour.
The original cost estimate to build Sydney Opera House was $7 million.
The final cost was $102 million and it was largely paid for by a State Lottery.
233 designs were submitted for the Opera House international design competition held in 1956.
Jørn Utzon from Denmark was announced the winner, receiving ₤5000 ($10,000) for his design.
Construction was expected to take four years.
It took 14 years. Work commenced in 1959 and involved 10,000 construction workers.
Paul Robeson was the first person to perform at The Sydney Opera House.
In 1960, he climbed the scaffolding and sang Ol' Man River to the construction workers as they ate lunch.
Sydney Opera House was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2007.
The Opera House is one of the 20th century's most famous and distinctive buildings.
It sits on Bennelong Point. Bennelong Point was named after Woollarawarre Bennelong,
a senior Eora man at the time of the arrival of British colonisers in Australia in 1788.
There was a de-commissioned tram depot on the site before the Opera House was constructed.
Though the shells appear uniformly white from a distance, they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern
composed of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours - glossy white and matte cream.
The tiles were manufactured by the Swedish company Höganäs AB which generally produced stoneware tiles for the paper-mill industry.
There are a number of performance venues in the complex.
There are two large auditoriums - The Concert Hall which seats 2,679 people and The Joan Sutherland Theatre which seats 1,507 people.
Inside The Concert Hall
When the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is on stage in The Concert Hall, the temperature must be 22.5 degrees to ensure the instruments stay in tune.
Temperature and humidity are critical to musical instruments.
The first public concert in the Concert Hall took place on 29 September 1973.
It was an all-Wagner orchestral concert performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Mackerras and with Birgit Nilsson as the soprano soloist. The first music played was the Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The concert closed with the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung.
One of the smaller theatres.
More than 8.2 million people visit the Opera House every year.
July 2018
Operatif organised a tour of the Opera House.
It was an excellent tour.
The original cost estimate to build Sydney Opera House was $7 million.
The final cost was $102 million and it was largely paid for by a State Lottery.
233 designs were submitted for the Opera House international design competition held in 1956.
Jørn Utzon from Denmark was announced the winner, receiving ₤5000 ($10,000) for his design.
Construction was expected to take four years.
It took 14 years. Work commenced in 1959 and involved 10,000 construction workers.
Paul Robeson was the first person to perform at The Sydney Opera House.
In 1960, he climbed the scaffolding and sang Ol' Man River to the construction workers as they ate lunch.
Sydney Opera House was added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2007.
The Opera House is one of the 20th century's most famous and distinctive buildings.
It sits on Bennelong Point. Bennelong Point was named after Woollarawarre Bennelong,
a senior Eora man at the time of the arrival of British colonisers in Australia in 1788.
There was a de-commissioned tram depot on the site before the Opera House was constructed.
Though the shells appear uniformly white from a distance, they actually feature a subtle chevron pattern
composed of 1,056,006 tiles in two colours - glossy white and matte cream.
The tiles were manufactured by the Swedish company Höganäs AB which generally produced stoneware tiles for the paper-mill industry.
There are a number of performance venues in the complex.
There are two large auditoriums - The Concert Hall which seats 2,679 people and The Joan Sutherland Theatre which seats 1,507 people.
Inside The Concert Hall
When the Sydney Symphony Orchestra is on stage in The Concert Hall, the temperature must be 22.5 degrees to ensure the instruments stay in tune.
Temperature and humidity are critical to musical instruments.
The first public concert in the Concert Hall took place on 29 September 1973.
It was an all-Wagner orchestral concert performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Mackerras and with Birgit Nilsson as the soprano soloist. The first music played was the Prelude to Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. The concert closed with the Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung.
One of the smaller theatres.
More than 8.2 million people visit the Opera House every year.