This past Sunday, Callie and I (along with the rest of the Stone family who arrived on Friday morning) took a behind the scenes tour of the Sydney Opera House. Having yet been inside the architectural masterpiece that graces the southern shore of Sydney Harbour, this was a chance for us to see the Opera House in a different way- to discover the incredible difficulty associated with its construction and to appreciate the uncompromising ingenuity of its design. Planning for the Opera House began in the early 1950s, and 233 entries from 32 countries were submitted into the competition. The winner was a Danish architect named Utzon whose drawings were more of an aspirational idea than an architectural blueprint. Nevertheless, construction began in 1959 and 16 years later, after an estimated 102 million Australian dollars, the Sydney Opera House was opened. It is worth mentioning that construction delays, cost overruns and political imperatives ultimately led to Utzon being dismissed from the project; he never returned to see his completed work.
Inside the Opera House, there are actually five separate performance spaces from a small experimental venue called "The Studio" to the 2,700 seat Concert Hall. In each area, however, there is a common emphasis on the harbour thanks to a tremendous amount of glass that allows multiple unique experiences with the water. And while the exterior of the Opera House is obviously beautiful, it is equally stunning on the interior. You know that feeling when you walk into a space and you feel instinctively that there is something special, something inexpressibly majestic, about where you are . . . well that's how you feel when you walk into the Concert Hall. It's not that it's large- although it certainly is- but it's grand and powerful in a way that is overwhelming. Like walking into the sanctuary of a gothic cathedral, the Concert Hall envelops you, it captures you from every angle. The walls and ceiling are made of special lightweight wood to carry the sound, and many performers elect not to use a microphone, which might seem a little difficult considering that the organ has 10,000 pipes! Nonetheless, the acoustics effortlessly blend the vocal and musical elements of a performance, and I can't imagine what it must be like to observe in person. (Fortunately, we will not to imagine for too long because we are planning on attending a concert with the Stones this next week.)
Needless to say, the Opera House is a masterpiece: it is distinctive, yet functional; it adds to the beauty of an already beautiful city and it seems to capture the essence of Australia. On our tour, we were told that the Opera House hosts a variety of activities from the fine arts like opera and ballet to more unusual performance mediums like burlesque and stand-up comedy. Luciano Pavarotti, Andre Bocceli, Sting, Coldplay, The Foo Fighters all have performed at the Opera House. It annually hosts the finals of Australian Idol and was recently home to an acrobatic circus. It is available for corporate gatherings and is used for school performances. (Imagine doing a school play on the stage of the Concert Hall!) Perhaps most unusually, it was used for the finals of the World Bodybuilding Championships in 1980, a competition that was won by now California Governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. When one thinks about an opera house, the image that inevitably comes to mind is a place for stodgy and elitist benefactors. It is a place for formal attire and expensive cocktails, a place where you need to know French or Italian to understand the performance, and a place where the uncultured are generally unwelcome. Except not in Sydney. Despite its reputation as a world-class performance venue, despite its World Heritage listing, despite being the most recognizable building of the 20th century, this iconic structure offers an inviting and laid-back experience where all are welcome. There is not even a dress code. The Opera House is unpretentious and accommodating, its tickets are affordable (which is unusual in Sydney), and its doors are open to those who are willing to walk through. As a result, the Sydney Opera House forms a perfect reflection of Australia: warm and hospitable, open, tolerant and gracious. And just as the Sydney Opera House has become the unique, recognizable image of Australia, so too does it capture the spirit of her people.
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