nomination by the Government of Australia - Sydney Opera House

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Part 2. Description
The Sydney Opera House literally became a testing
laboratory and a vast, open-air precasting factory.
Examples of engineering and technological feats and
other innovations are described in Part 3.A.
The Sydney Opera House took 16 years to build at an
estimated cost of A$102 million. This was six years
longer than scheduled and 10 times more than its
original estimated cost (Murray 2004: xv). Weston
points out that it was miraculous that Utzon was given
so much freedom to explore, experiment and succeed
in building the structure at all (Weston 2002: 184).
Certainly it was expensive and diffi cult to build,
but so were Gothic cathedrals and many
other major buildings, and part of their appeal
is the feeling of embodied energy and effort
expended in achieving a great work … [But] as
the fi rst and still unrivalled modern ‘blockbuster
building’, it must have paid for itself many
times over by giving Sydney and Australia an
unrivalled and instantly recognisable emblem—
‘the greatest public-relations building since the
pyramids’ to quote an Australian MP (Weston
2002: 184).
Probably the most signifi cant feature of the
whole Sydney Opera House story is the
astonishing reality that in a modern society with
all its checks and balances, its accountants
and accountability, its budgets and budgetary
controls, a folly of this scale could be
contemplated. In other words it is nothing
short of miraculous that it happened at all
(Zunz 1973: 2).
2.27 2.28
Figure 2.27 Paul Robeson sings to the construction workers
in 1960
The Sydney Opera House as a performing
arts centre
Many famous artistic performers from Australia and
overseas have been associated with the Sydney
Opera House. The fi rst performance at the Sydney
Opera House took place in 1960, long before it
offi cially opened, when the American actor and singer
Paul Robeson climbed onto the scaffolding at the
construction site to sing to the workers. Thirteen
years later the fi rst offi cial performance was given
in the Opera Theatre on 28 September 1973 by the
Australian Opera Company. On 20 October 1973 the
Sydney Opera House was offi cially opened by Queen
Elizabeth II. During the period immediately after the
opening some 300 journalists arrived from all over the
world ‘to see if the Sydney Opera House was to be a
white elephant or a sacred cow’ (Kerr 1993: 25). A Los
Angeles correspondent wrote:
This, without question, must be the most
innovative, the most daring, the most dramatic
and in many ways, the most beautifully
constructed home for the lyric and related
muses in modern times (Kerr 1993: 25).
A timeline of the Sydney Opera House is at
Appendix 10.D.
Figure 2.28 Aerial view of the Sydney Opera House during
its opening on 20 October 1973