Opera House on the Water. Sydney Opera House Disputes and Crisis

27.12.2021Heading: The buildings

The Sydney Opera House has its own unique futuristic architecture, thanks to which it became famous throughout the world. Locals have dubbed it not only one of the iconic landmarks of the city, but even the hallmark of Sydney. This love is shared by travelers who, during a close acquaintance with this temple of art, instantly feel respect for it. One of the most recognizable buildings on the planet hosts the world's best artists and attracts more than 8 million visitors annually.

In March 1959, townspeople gathered in the harbor at Bennelong Point to watch a ceremony that marked the beginning of construction of the Sydney Opera House. The Danish architect Jorn Utzon, who designed the project of the future building, brought a bronze plaque to Australia - on that day it was installed at the intersection of the axes of the two supposed concert halls, and from that moment work on the construction of the architectural masterpiece began. The memorial plaque can be seen today on the steps of the theater. Coming up with the appearance of the building, Jorn created something completely extraordinary: according to his idea, the roof of the building was supposed to consist of several spheres, which gave the facade of the theater the image of a ship sailing under sail. This solution allowed creating amazing acoustics within its walls.

Initially, it was planned to complete the construction within four years, but due to many reasons, the implementation of the bold project was delayed for fourteen years. A large number of complications led to growing dissatisfaction with Jorn Utzon, who was not satisfied with the changes made to the original version. The offended architect left his team without seeing the final result. Appointed to replace him, young specialist Peter Hall was initially overwhelmed by the scale of the project, but nevertheless took on the difficult task.
In 1973, a significant event took place - the Sydney Opera House opened its doors. The celebration turned out to be grandiose, especially thanks to the presence of Queen Elizabeth II, who officially announced the beginning of the work of a new cultural mecca and praised the craftsmen for their amazing imagination and talent.

In total, the theater has four main rooms, defined for different events. The largest is the concert hall - it hosts enchanting concerts of symphonic music with the participation of one of the largest organs in the world. The next in terms of capacity is the opera hall (aka ballet), which is 1,000 seats behind the first, accommodating 1,500 people within its walls. The remaining two can accommodate 400-500 people, and they are intended for dramatic performances. Each has the usual theater setting: a red velvet curtain and the same shade of seating, an elegant crystal chandelier pouring out soft light - a worthy decoration for an outstanding opera house.

It is important to note that the doors of this temple of art are also open to young people: within the walls of the theater, musical performances by various rock / indie / techno bands are held, as well as performances by illusionists and themed Christmas events.

Location: Australia, Sydney
Building: 1959 - 1973
Architect: Jorn Utzon
Coordinates: 33 ° 51 "25.4" S 151 ° 12 "54.6" E

Content:

Short description

The whole world admires the Sydney Opera House. Against the backdrop of skyscrapers and yachts, the theater looks like an elegant stone flower folded from petal walls. Sometimes the domes of a building are compared to the shutters of huge sea shells or blown sails.

Sydney Opera House aerial view

The analogies are justified: this unusual structure with a sail-shaped roof is located on a rocky promontory, cutting into the bay. The Sydney Opera House is famous not only for its original roof structure, but also for its magnificent interiors, made in a futuristic style called "Space Age Gothic".

It is in the building of the Sydney Opera that the world's largest theater curtain hangs - each of its halves is 93 square meters. The Sydney Theater also boasts the world's largest organ with 10,500 pipes.

The importance of the House of the Muses in the life of Sydney cannot be overemphasized. A concert hall with 2679 seats and an opera house with 1547 seats are located under one roof. For dramatic and musical performances, a "small stage" is set aside - another hall for 544 spectators. There is also a cinema showroom with 398 seats. The venue with a capacity of 210 people is used for conferences. The theater complex, which is visited by about 2 million people annually, is complemented by a recording studio, library, art mini-rooms, restaurants and cafes.

Sydney Opera House - a masterpiece of a Danish architect

Utzon The creation of the Sydney theater was inspired by the English conductor and composer Eugene Goossens, who was invited to Sydney in 1945 to record a concert cycle. The musician found that the inhabitants of the former British colony have a keen interest in music, but there is no suitable hall for performances of opera and ballet throughout the continent.

In those days, concerts were held in the city hall, which in its architecture resembles a "wedding cake" in the style of the Second Empire, with poor acoustics and an auditorium for 2.5 thousand listeners. "The city needs a new theater that all Australia can be proud of!" - declared Sir Eugene Goossens.

880 specialists from 45 countries took part in the competition for the best project, but only 230 of them reached the final. The winner is 38-year-old Dane Jorn Utzon. It is difficult to say what could have been built on the site of the building crowned with "sails-domes" if the American architect Erro Saarinen had not been the chairman of the selection committee, who insisted that such an extraordinary project should win in the competition. According to Utzon himself, the original idea came to him when he peeled an orange and assembled a full sphere from hemispherical orange peels. The construction of the Sydney Opera House, which began in 1959, was delayed and instead of the planned 4 years it lasted 14 years.

Money was sorely lacking, and expenses were growing at an accelerated pace. Investors had to be attracted, which entailed a revision of the initial design of the building in favor of commercial space allocated for restaurants and cafes. "A little more, and the building will turn into a swollen square, into a stamped living box!" - Utzon exclaimed in indignation. The total amount spent on the construction of the Sydney Opera House ($ 102 million) was 15 times higher than the projected amount ($ 7 million). The Cabinet of Ministers, accused of "unreasonably high spending and protracted construction," resigned, and the architect himself, in despair, burned the blueprints and decisively left Sydney.

Sydney Opera House Opening

The work on the design of the facades and interior decoration was completed 7 years after Utzon's resignation. In October 1973, in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of England, the theater was inaugurated, and the first performance given on the stage of the Sydney House of the Muses was Sergei Prokofiev's opera War and Peace. In 2003, Utzon received the prestigious Pritzker Prize for his theater project, and in 2007 the Sydney Opera House was declared a World Heritage Site. But, alas, Utzon's resentment against the Australian authorities was so great that he never returned to Sydney and died in 2008 without seeing the completed opera house in all its glory.

The Sydney Opera House is Australia's flagship landmark. Opened by Queen Elizabeth II of England in 1973, the Sydney Opera House is becoming one of the most important attractions in Australia, refusing to visit which would be an unforgivable mistake. Until 1958, a tram depot was located on the site where the opera house now stands, and even before the depot - a fort.

The theater took 14 years to build and cost Australia about $ 102 million. It was originally planned to complete the project in 4 years, but due to difficulties with internal finishing work, the opening moment was significantly delayed. For normal operation, the theater needs as much electrical energy as would be enough for a city with a population of 25 thousand people. For the construction of this unique complex, piles were driven into the ocean floor of Sydney Bay to a depth of 25 meters. The roof covering consists of 1.056.006 pieces of white tiles and tiles with a matte cream shade.

The Sydney Opera House has very recognizable shapes that resemble giant sails. But if many people recognize the theater immediately, seeing it from the outside in a photo or on television, then not everyone will be able to answer with confidence what kind of building it is, examining its decoration from the inside. You can get to know all the beauties of the theater with an excursion going through its bowels at 7 o'clock in the morning, that is, at a time when the Sydney Opera House is still dormant and its walls are not disturbed by sonorous and loud performances.

This excursion is conducted only once a day. A huge number of different performers from all over the world perform in the theater, among them a tradition has arisen to kiss the wall before a performance, but only the most worthy and great among them are honored. For example, Janet Jackson's imprinted lips can be found on the kissing wall. Nevertheless, the excursion can only be an introductory stage in the world of the Sydney Opera House. In order to get the maximum impressions and positive emotions, you need to attend at least 1 performance.

Another impressive venue for performances in Sydney is the Australia Stadium, which has a capacity of 83.5 thousand people.

Information for visitors:

The address: Bennelong Point, Sydney NSW 2000.

How to get there: The Opera House is located in Sydney Harbor at Bennelong Point. It will be easy for you to get here from anywhere in Sydney, near the intersection of sea and land transport routes.

Working hours:

Daily (except Sunday) from 9:00 am to late evening;

Sunday: 10:00 am until late evening (subject to event).

Prices: depending on the event.

The project of the Opera House is based on the desire to bring people from the world of daily routine to the world of fantasy, where musicians and actors live.
Jorn Utzon, July 1964.

Two fragments of a crenellated roof on the Olympic emblem - and the whole world knows in which city the Games will be held. The Sydney Opera House is the only 20th century building that is on a par with such great architectural symbols of the 19th as Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. Along with Hagia Sophia and Taj Mahal, this building belongs to the highest cultural achievements of the last millennium. How did it happen that it was Sydney - not even the most beautiful and elegant city in the world, even according to Australians - that got this miracle? And why did no other city compete with him? Why are most modern cities a jumble of ugly skyscrapers, while our attempts to mark the end of the millennium with the creation of an architectural masterpiece have failed every single one of them?

Before the Opera House, Sydney boasted of its world famous Bridge. Painted in a sullen gray, it looms like a Calvinist conscience over the city that was conceived as the Gulag of King George and still cannot free itself from the strong influence of a small island on the other side of the world. One glance at our Bridge is enough to make you don't want to look a second time. The construction of this solid structure nearly ruined the British firm Dorman, Long & Co. The granite pillars of the Bridge, enlarged copies of Cenotaph 1 on Whitehall, do not really support anything, but their construction helped the Yorkshire Middlesbrough survive the depression. But even adorned with Olympic rings and huge Australian flags, Sydney Bridge is now nothing more than a proscenium, for the views of tourists are irresistibly attracted by the wonderful silhouette of the Opera House, which seems to hover over the blue waters of the harbor. This daring architectural fantasy effortlessly outshines the world's largest steel arch.

Like Sydney itself, the Opera House was invented by the British. In 1945, Sir Eugene Goossens, a violinist and composer, arrived in Australia, who was invited by the Australian Broadcasting Committee (at the time headed by another refined Briton, Sir Charles Moses) as conductor to record the concert cycle. Goossens discovered among the locals an "unusually keen interest" in the art of music, but there was practically nowhere to satisfy him, except for the Sydney City Hall, whose architecture resembled a "wedding cake" in the spirit of the Second Empire, with poor acoustics and a hall with only 2,500 seats. Like many other visitors, Goossens was struck by the indifference of the Sydney people to the magnificent panorama against which the city stretches, and their love for the well-worn European ideas that arose in a completely different historical and cultural context. This "cultural servility" was later reflected in the squabble over the foreign-designed Opera House.

Goossens, this lover of bohemian life and indefatigable bon vivant, knew what was missing here: a palace for opera, ballet, theater and concerts - “society should be aware of modern musical achievements”. In the company of Kurt Langer, a city planner from Vienna, he combed the entire city with true missionary fervor in search of a suitable location. They settled on the rocky Bennelong Point near the ring embankment, the hub where citizens switched from ferries to trains and buses. On this promontory, named after an Australian aborigine friend of the first Sydney governor, was Fort Macquarie - a real monster, a late Victorian antique forgery. Behind its powerful walls with loopholes and crenellated turrets, a modest institution was hidden - the central tram depot. A short period of fascination with the citizens of Sydney's criminal past was yet to come. “And thank God,” as one visitor remarked, “otherwise they would have written down even a tram depot as an architectural monument!” Goossens found the location he found "ideal." He dreamed of a huge auditorium for 3500-4000 spectators, in which all Sydney people, exhausted without music, could finally quench their cultural thirst.

The first "convert" was G. Ingem Ashworth, a former British colonel, then professor of architecture at the University of Sydney. If he understood anything, it was more likely in Indian barracks than in opera houses, but, once succumbing to the charm of Goossens' idea, he became its loyal follower and stubborn defender. Ashworth introduced Goossens to John Joseph Cahill, a descendant of Irish immigrants who would soon become Labor Prime Minister of New South Wales. A connoisseur of behind-the-scenes politics, dreaming of bringing art to the masses, Cahill secured the support of the Australian public for the plan of the aristocrats - many still call the Opera House "Taj Cahill". He recruited another opera lover, Wall Hawiland, head of the Sydney Water Authority. The ice has broken.

On May 17, 1955, the state government gave permission for the construction of the Opera House at Bennelong Point, on the condition that public funds were not needed. An international competition was announced for the building design. The following year, Keyhill’s cabinet struggled to hold on to power for a second three-year term. Time was running out, but sanctimonious, provincial New South Wales was already preparing the first retaliation for the fighters for the domestication of Sydney. Some unknown person called Moses and warned that the luggage of Goossens, who had gone abroad to study opera houses, would be screened at the Sydney airport - then, in the pre-narcotic era, it was unheard of impudence. Moses did not inform his friend about this, and upon his return, the attributes of the "black mass" were found in Goossens' suitcases, including rubber masks shaped like genitals. It turned out that the musician sometimes whiled away boring Sydney evenings in the company of black magic lovers under the leadership of a certain Rosalyn (Rowe) Norton, a very famous personality in the relevant circles. Goossens stated that the ritual paraphernalia (which today would not even merit a cursory glance at the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Ball) were imposed on him by blackmailers. He was fined a hundred pounds, he left the place of conductor of the new Sydney Symphony Orchestra and went back to England, where he died in anguish and obscurity. This is how the Opera House lost its first, most eloquent and influential supporter.

223 works were sent to the competition - the world is clearly interested in a fresh idea. Before the scandal erupted, Goossens managed to select a jury that included four professional architects: his friend Ashwert; Leslie Martin, co-founder of London Festival Hall; Finnish-American Ero Saarinen, who recently abandoned boring ruler design and embarked on a new "concrete shell" technology with its sculptural capabilities; and Gobden Parks, chairman of the State Government Architecture Committee, who symbolically represented Australians. Goossens and Moses formulated the terms of the competition. Although they spoke of the Opera House in the singular, it was supposed to have two halls: one very large for concerts and lavish productions like operas by Wagner or Puccini, and the other smaller for chamber operas, drama and ballet; plus warehouses for storing props and premises for rehearsal rooms and restaurants. Traveling around Europe, Goossens saw what such numerous demands lead to: the awkward construction of theaters has to be hidden behind a high façade and a faceless rear. For the Sydney Opera, which was supposed to be erected on the peninsula, surrounded by the water surface and the urban massif of high-rise buildings, this solution was not suitable.

All but one challenger started by trying to solve an obvious difficulty: how to fit two opera houses on a small 250 by 350 feet of land, surrounded on three sides by water? The French writer Françoise Fromonot, who calls the Opera building one of the “great projects” that was never realized in the conceived form, in her book “Jorn Utzon: The Sydney Opera” introduces the reader to the winners of the second and third prizes (it is quite possible to judge by their works projects of all other participants in the competition). A group of American architects in second place arranged the theaters back-to-back, combining their stages in one central tower, and tried to smooth out the unwanted effect of a “pair of shoes” with the help of a spiral structure on the pylons. The British project, which won third place, bears a noticeable resemblance to New York's Lincoln Center - here theaters stand one after another on a huge paved square. But, as Robert Frost said, in the very idea of theater there is "something that cannot stand walls." Out of nowhere, the buildings represented by these projects look like disguised factories for the production of consumer goods or the same meat pies, for some inexplicable reason, put on public display - in fact, they are doubles of a tram depot sentenced to death.

Only in one competition work the theaters are placed close to each other, and the problem of the walls is removed due to their absence: a series of fan-shaped white roofs are attached directly to the Cyclopean podium. The author of the project suggested storing the decorations in special recesses made in a massive platform: this was how the curtain problem was solved. The pile of rejected projects grew, and the jury members returned to this strikingly original work for the umpteenth time. Saarinen is said to have hired a boat to show colleagues what the building would look like from the water. On January 29, 1957, beaming Joe Cahill announced the result. The winner was a thirty-eight-year-old Dane who lives with his family in a romantic corner near Hamlet's Elsinore, in a house built according to his own design (this was one of the few projects that the architect realized). The hard-to-pronounce name of the laureate, which didn’t say anything to most Sydney people, was Jorn Utzon.

An unusual fate was behind the original project. Like all Danes, Utzon grew up by the sea. His father Oge, a yacht designer, taught his sons how to sail on Øresund. Jorn's childhood was spent on the water, among unfinished models and unfinished boat hulls at his father's shipyard. Years later, a crane operator working on the construction of the Opera House, seeing him from a bird's eye view, will say to Sydney artist Emerson Curtis: “There is not a single right angle, buddy! A ship, and nothing more! " Young Utzon first thought to follow the path of his father, but poor academic performance, a consequence of dyslexia, crossed out this intention, instilling in him an unjustified feeling of inferiority. Two artists from the circle of friends of his grandmother taught the young man to draw and observe nature, and on the advice of his uncle, the sculptor, he entered the Royal Danish Academy, which at that time (1937) was in a state of aesthetic fermentation: the heavy, ornate forms of the Ibsen era gave way to pure , the light lines of modern Scandinavia. Sydney is fortunate that Utzon's talent took shape during the Second World War, when commercial construction almost came to a standstill. As in all modern cities, Sydney's city center has become a business district, where thousands of people gather. Thanks to the appearance of the elevator, one and the same piece of land could be leased at the same time to sixty, or even a hundred, in a word, God knows how many tenants, and cities began to grow upwards. Sometimes in modern megalopolises one comes across original structures that can amaze the imagination (for example, Parisian Boburg), but basically their appearance is determined by the same type of skyscrapers with a steel frame and panel walls from the building catalog. For the first time in the history of mankind, the most beautiful cities in the world are becoming similar to each other like twins.

During the war, Utzon studied in Denmark, then in Sweden and could not participate in commercial projects to create such expressionless structures. Instead, he began to send his works to competitions - after the war, the construction of all kinds of public buildings revived. In 1945, together with a fellow student, he was awarded the Minor Gold Medal for the project of a concert hall for Copenhagen. The structure, which remained on paper, was supposed to be erected on a special platform. Utzon borrowed this idea from classical Chinese architecture. Chinese palaces stood on podiums, the height of which corresponded to the greatness of the rulers, and the length of the flights of stairs corresponded to the scale of their power. According to Utzon, such platforms had their own plus: they emphasized the detachment of timeless art from the bustle of the city. Utzon and his colleague crowned the concert hall with a copper-clad concrete "sink" whose external profile mimicked the shape of the sound-reflecting ceiling inside the building. This student work already foreshadowed the overwhelming success that eleven years later fell to the lot of its author in Sydney.

In 1946, Utzon took part in another competition - to erect a building on the site of the Crystal Palace in London, built by Sir Joseph Paxton in 1851 and burned down in 1936. England was fortunate that the first-prize project was never completed and a structure reminiscent of the famous Baths of Caracalla of another dying empire, Ancient Rome, was never built. The compositional elements of the Sydney Opera were already visible in Utzon's work. "Poetic and inspirational," said the English architect Maxwell Fry about this project, "but it looks more like a dream than a reality." There is already a hint here that sooner or later Utzon's originality will come into conflict with the down-to-earthness of less refined natures. Of the other projects, only one could be compared in technical audacity to the Crystal Palace: two Britons, Clive Entwistle and Ove Arup, proposed a pyramid of glass and concrete. Far ahead of his time, Entuistle, following the Greek proverb “Gods see from all sides,” proposed turning the roof into a “fifth facade”: “The ambiguity of the pyramid is especially interesting. Such a building is equally facing the sky and the horizon ... New architecture does not just need sculpture, it itself becomes a sculpture. " The Fifth Facade is the essence of the idea of the Sydney Opera. Perhaps, due to school failures, Denmark never really became home for Utzon. In the late 1940s, the Utzons traveled to Greece and Morocco, drove around the United States in an old car, visited Frank Lloyd Wright, Saarinen, and Mies van der Rohe, who honored the young architect with a "minimalist" interview. Apparently, in communicating with people, he professed the same principles of strict functionality as in architecture: turning away from his guest, Van der Rohe dictated short answers to questions to the secretary, who repeated them loudly. Then the family went to Mexico - to look at the temples of the Aztecs in the Oaxacan Monte Alban and the Yucatan Chichen Itza. These striking ruins on massive platforms, to which wide staircases lead, seem to float above a sea of jungle that stretches to the horizon. Utzon was looking for architectural masterpieces, equally attractive from the inside and out, and at the same time not the product of any one culture (he strove to create an architecture that would absorb elements of different cultures). A more striking contrast to the British austere Harbor Bridge than Utzon's Sydney Opera is hard to imagine, and there was no better emblem for a burgeoning city claiming a new synthesis of cultures. In any case, none of the other participants in the 1957 competition came close to the laureate.

The entire Sydney elite was fascinated by the winning project, and even more - by its author, who first visited the city in July 1957. (Utzon drew all the necessary information about the place of construction from nautical charts.) "Our Gary Cooper!" - involuntarily burst out from one Sydney lady when she saw a tall blue-eyed blond and heard his exotic Scandinavian accent, which favorably differed from the rough local pronunciation. Although the project presented was actually a sketch, a Sydney firm estimated the cost of the work at three and a half million pounds. "It can't be cheaper!" The Sydney Morning Herald cackled. Utzon volunteered to start collecting donations, selling kisses for a hundred pounds apiece, but this playful offer had to be turned down, and the money was collected in a more familiar way - through a lottery, thanks to which construction funds grew by one hundred thousand pounds in two weeks. Utzon returned to Denmark, put together a project team there, and things went well. “We were like a jazz orchestra - everyone knew exactly what was required of him,” recalls one of Utzon's associates, Jon Lundberg, in the wonderful documentary Edge of the Possible. "We spent seven absolutely happy years together."

The jury chose Utzon's project, believing that his sketches could "build one of the greatest buildings in the world," but at the same time experts noted that his drawings were "too simple and more like sketches." Here one can hear an implicit hint of difficulties that have not been overcome to this day. A huge spectacular staircase leads to the two buildings located side by side, and all together create an unforgettable overall silhouette. However, there was practically no room for traditional side scenes. In addition, for opera productions, a hall with a short reverberation time (about 1.2 seconds) was needed so that the singers' words did not merge, and for a large orchestra this time should be about two seconds, provided that the sound was partially reflected from the side walls. Utzon proposed lifting the sets from the pits behind the stage (this idea could be realized thanks to the presence of a massive podium), and the roof-shells should be shaped so that all acoustic requirements were satisfied. A love of music, technical ingenuity and vast experience in building opera houses make Germany a world leader in acoustics, and Utzon was very wise to invite Walter Unruh from Berlin as his expert on this subject.

The NSW government brought in the design firm Ove Arupa to partner with Utzon. The two Danes got along well - perhaps even too well, because by March 2, 1959, when Joe Cahill laid the foundation stone for the new building, basic engineering problems had not yet been resolved. Less than a year later, Cahill died. “He adored Utzon for his talent and integrity, and Utzon bowed before his calculating patron because at heart he was a real dreamer,” Fromono writes. Shortly thereafter, Ove Arup stated that 3000 working hours and 1500 hours of machine time (computers were only just beginning to be used in architecture) did not help find a technical solution to implement Utzon's idea, who proposed to build roofs in the form of huge free-form shells. “From a design point of view, its design is simply naive,” said the London designers.

Utzon himself saved Sydney's future pride. At first, he intended to “make shells out of reinforcing mesh, pollinate and cover with tiles” - approximately in this way his uncle, a sculptor, made mannequins, but this technique was completely unsuitable for the huge roof of the theater. Utzon's design team and Arup's designers tried dozens of variations of parabolas, ellipsoids, and more exotic surfaces, but they all turned out to be unsuitable. One day in 1961, a deeply disappointed Utzon was dismantling another unusable model and folding the shells to send them to storage, when suddenly an original idea dawned on him (perhaps thanks to his dyslexia for this). Similar in shape, the shells fit more or less well in one pile. Which surface, Utzon asked himself, has a constant curvature? Spherical. Sinks can be made from triangular sections of an imaginary concrete ball, 492 feet in diameter, and these sections, in turn, can be assembled from smaller, curved triangles, manufactured industrially and pre-tiled on site. The result is multi-layer vaults - a structure renowned for its strength and stability. So the roof problem was removed.

Subsequently, this decision of Utzon became the reason for his dismissal. But the genius of the Dane cannot be denied. The tiles were laid mechanically, and the roofs were perfectly flat (it would have been impossible to achieve this manually). That is why the sun glare reflected from the water plays so beautifully on them. Since any cross-section of the vaults is part of a circle, the outlines of the roofs have the same shape and the building looks very harmonious. If the fancy roofs were erected according to Utzon's original design, the theater would seem like a lightweight toy compared to the mighty bridge nearby. Now the appearance of the building is created by the straight lines of the staircase and the podium in combination with the circles of the roofs - a simple and strong drawing in which the influences of China, Mexico, Greece, Morocco, Denmark and God knows what, has turned this whole vinaigrette of different styles into a single whole ... Utzon's aesthetic principles offered an answer to a key question facing any modern architect: how to combine functionality and plastic grace and satisfy people's cravings for beauty in our industrial age. Fromono notes that Utzon moved away from the then fashionable "organic style", which, in the words of its discoverer Frank Lloyd Wright, ordered "to hold on to reality with both hands." Unlike the American architect, Utzon wanted to understand what new means of expression the artist could find in our time, when machines have replaced man everywhere.

Meanwhile, the new shape of the roofs gave rise to new difficulties. Higher ones, they no longer met the acoustic requirements, it was necessary to design separate sound-reflecting ceilings. The openings of the "shells" facing the bay had to be closed with something; from an aesthetic point of view, this was a difficult task (since the walls were not supposed to look too bare and give the impression that they supported the vaults) and to cope with it, according to Utzon, could only be done with plywood. By a lucky coincidence, an ardent adherent of this material, the inventor and industrialist Ralph Symonds, was found in Sydney. When he got bored of making furniture, he bought an abandoned slaughterhouse in Homebush Bay near the Olympic Stadium. There he made roofs for Sydney trains from 45-by-8-foot solid plywood sheets, then the largest in the world. By covering plywood with a thin layer of bronze, lead and aluminum, Symonds created new materials of any desired shape, size and strength, with any weather resistance and any acoustic properties. This is exactly what Utzon needed to finish the Opera House.

Designing sound-reflecting ceilings from geometrically shaped pieces proved to be more difficult than the vaults that Utzon liked to display by cutting orange peels into pieces. He studied for a long time and carefully the treatise "Ying Zao Fa Shi" on the prefabricated consoles that support the roofs of Chinese temples. However, the principle of repetition underlying the new architectural style required the use of industrial technology that could be used to produce homogeneous elements. Ultimately, Utzon's design team settled on the following idea: If you roll an imaginary drum about six hundred feet across an incline, it leaves a trail in a continuous row of grooves. Such gutters, which were supposed to be made in the Simonds factory from equally curved parts, could simultaneously reflect sound and draw the audience's eyes to the arches of the proscenium of the Great and Small Halls. It turned out that the ceilings (as well as the concrete elements of the roofs) can be made in advance, and then transported wherever required on barges - in about the same way, unfinished hulls were delivered to the shipyard of Utzon Sr. The largest groove, corresponding to the lowest organ notes, was to be 140 feet long.

Utzon wanted to paint the acoustic ceilings in very spectacular colors: in the Great Hall - scarlet and gold, in the Small - blue and silver (a combination he borrowed from the coral fish of the Great Barrier Reef). After consulting with Simonds, he decided to close the mouths of the "sinks" with giant glass walls with plywood mullions attached to the ribs of the vault and curved to match the shape of the vestibules below them. Light and strong, like the wing of a seabird, the whole structure, thanks to the play of light, was supposed to create a sense of mystery, unpredictability of what is hidden inside. Fascinated by invention, Utzon worked with Simonds' engineers to design restrooms, railings, doors - all from magical new material.

The experience of working together as an architect and an industrialist using cutting-edge technology was unfamiliar to Australians. Although, in fact, this is just a modernized version of the old European tradition - the cooperation of medieval architects with skilled masons. In the era of universal religiosity, serving God required complete dedication from a person. Time and money didn't matter. One modern masterpiece is still being built according to these principles: the Atonement Church of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia) by Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí was founded in 1882, Gaudi himself died in 1926, and construction is still incomplete and is only progressing. how Barcelona enthusiasts raise the necessary funds. For some time it seemed that the old days had returned, only now people served not God, but art: ardent fans of Utzon bought lottery tickets, donating fifty thousand pounds a week, and thus freed taxpayers from the financial burden. Meanwhile, clouds were gathering over the architect and his creation.

The first estimate of the cost of the project at three and a half million pounds was made "by eye" by a reporter who was in a hurry to submit the article to the set. It turned out that even the cost of the first contract - for the construction of the foundation and the podium - estimated at 2.75 million pounds, is much lower than the real one. The haste of Joe Cahill, who laid the building before all the engineering problems were solved, was politically justified - Labor was losing popularity - but it forced the designers to randomly choose the load that the vaults had not yet designed on the catwalk. When Utzon decided to make the roofs spherical, he had to blow up the foundation he had started and lay a new, more durable one. In January 1963, a £ 6.25 million roof contract was awarded - yet another example of unwarranted optimism. Three months later, when Utzon moved to Sydney, the allowable spending cap was raised to 12.5 million.

The rise in costs and the slow pace of construction did not escape the attention of those who sat in Sydney's oldest public building - the House of Parliament - which was called the "drunken shop" because the prisoners and exiles who built it worked only for booze. Since then, corruption in Welsh political circles has been the talk of the town. On the very first day when the winner of the competition was announced, and even earlier, a wave of criticism arose. The villagers, who traditionally opposed the Sydney people, did not like the fact that most of the money ends up in the capital, even if it was collected through the lottery. The competing contractors were jealous of Simonds and other entrepreneurs that Utzon favored. It is known that the great Frank Lloyd Wright (he was already under ninety) reacted to his project like this: "A whim, and nothing else!" : “Pure poetry. Fabulous!" However, few of the 119 wounded Australians whose applications were rejected showed the same nobility as Seidler.

In 1965, the interior of New South Wales was hit by a drought. Promising to "deal with this tangled situation around the Opera House," the parliamentary opposition said the rest of the lottery money would go towards building schools, roads and hospitals. In May 1965, after twenty-four years of rule, the Laborites were defeated in the elections. The new prime minister, Robert Askin, was jubilant: "The whole pie is now ours, guys!" - bearing in mind that now nothing prevents you from properly capitalizing on the income from brothels, casinos and illegal sweepstakes controlled by the Sydney police. Utzon was forced to leave the post of head of construction and leave Sydney for good. It took the next seven years and huge sums of money to disfigure his masterpiece.

Bitterly narrating about further events, Philip Drew, the author of the book about Utzon, reports that immediately after the elections Askin lost all interest in the Opera House and hardly mentioned it until his death in 1981 (note, by the way, that he died multimillionaire). According to Drew, the role of the main villain in this story belongs to the Minister of Public Works Davis Hughes, a former school teacher from provincial Orange, who, like Utzon, is still alive. Referring to the documents, Drew accuses him of planning to remove Utzon even before the election. Summoned to Hughes on the carpet, confident that the Minister of Public Works would talk about sewers, dams and bridges, Utzon did not sense any danger. Moreover, he was flattered to see that the cabinet of the new minister was covered with sketches and photographs of his creation. “I decided that Hughes loved my Opera House,” he recalled years later. In a sense, it was so. Hughes personally spearheaded an investigation into the "Opera scandal" promised during the campaign, and did not lose sight of a single detail. Looking for a way to topple Utzon, he turned to government architect Bill Wood. He advised to suspend the monthly cash payments, without which Utzon could not continue to work. Hughes then demanded that detailed drawings of the building be submitted to him for approval in order to conduct an open tender for contractors. This mechanism, invented in the 19th century to prevent bribery of government officials, was suitable for laying sewers and building roads, but was completely inapplicable in this case.

The inevitable denouement came in early 1966, when £ 51,626 had to be paid to the designers of equipment for the Great Hall's opera productions. Hughes once again suspended the issuance of money. In a state of extreme irritation (exacerbated, according to Drew, by the dire financial situation of Utzon himself, who had to pay taxes on the money earned to both the Australian and Danish governments), the architect tried to influence Hughes with a hidden threat. Refusing his salary, on February 28, 1966, Utzon told the minister: "You forced me to leave my post." As he followed the architect out of Hughes' office, then-design team member Bill Wheatland turned to see "the minister bending over his desk, hiding a satisfied grin." That evening, Hughes called an emergency meeting and announced that Utzon had "resigned" from his post, but the completion of the Opera House would not be difficult without him. However, there was one obvious problem: Utzon won the competition and gained worldwide fame, at least among architects. Hughes had found a replacement in advance and put in his place 34-year-old Peter Hall of the Department of Public Works, who had built several university buildings with public funds. Hall had a long-standing friendship with Utzon and hoped to enlist his support, but, to his surprise, was refused. Sydney architecture students, led by an outraged Harry Seidler, picket the unfinished building with the slogan "Bring Utzon back!" Most of the government architects, including Peter Hall, petitioned Hughes, which said that "from a technical and ethical point of view, Utzon is the only person capable of completing the Opera House." Hughes did not flinch, and Hall's appointment was made.

With a poor understanding of music and acoustics, Hall and his entourage - now mostly Australians - went on another tour of the opera houses. In New York, expert Ben Schlanger expressed the opinion that it is impossible to stage an opera at all at the Sydney Theater, except perhaps in an abridged form and only in the Small Hall. Drew proves that he was wrong: there are many dual-use halls with good acoustics, including a Tokyo one designed by the former assistant to the genius Dane, Yuzo Mikami. The stage equipment, which had arrived from Europe in the last days of Utzon's tenure, was sold for scrap at fifty pence a pound, and a recording studio was set up in the wilderness below the stage. The changes made by Hall and his team cost $ 4.7 million. The result was an expressionless, outdated interior that we see today. Hall's innovations did not affect the appearance of the Opera, on which its world fame is based, with one (unfortunately, too noticeable) exception. He replaced the plywood mullions for glass walls, reminiscent of gull wings, with painted steel windows in the fashion of the 60s. But he did not manage to cope with geometry: windows, disfigured by strange bulges - a harbinger of complete collapse inside the premises. By October 20, 1973, the day of the inauguration of the Opera by Queen Elizabeth, construction costs amounted to A $ 102 million (£ 51 million at the then exchange rate). 75 percent of this amount was spent after Utzon left. Architecture professor and Sydney cartoonist George Molnar put a scathing caption under one of his drawings: “Mr. Hughes is right. We have to control costs, no matter what the cost. " “If Mr. Utzon had stayed, we would have lost nothing,” added the Sydney Morning Herald sadly, seven years late. Peter Hall was confident that the work to redesign the Opera House would glorify his name, but he never received any more significant orders. He died in Sydney in 1989, forgotten by everyone. Sensing that Labor was gaining strength again, Hughes, even before the opening of the Opera, changed his post to the sinecure of the representative of New South Wales in London and doomed himself to further obscurity. If he is remembered in Sydney, it is only as a vandal who disfigured the pride of the metropolis. Hughes still maintains that the Opera House would never have been completed without him. A bronze plaque, which has been at the entrance since 1973, bears witness to his ambition: after the names of the crowned persons, the name of the Minister of Public Works, The Honorable Davis Hughes, is engraved on it, followed by the names of Peter Hall and his assistants. Utzon's surname is not on this list, he was not even mentioned in Elizabeth's solemn speech - a shameful impoliteness, because in the days of the glory of the Dane, the monarch received him on board her yacht in Sydney Harbor.

Still hoping for a second invitation to Sydney, Utzon in Denmark did not stop thinking about his plan. He twice applied with a proposal to continue working, but both times received an icy refusal from the minister. On a dark night in 1968, a desperate Utzon arranged a ritual funeral for his theater: he burned the last models and blueprints on the shores of a desert fiord in Jutland. In Denmark, they were well aware of his troubles, so there was no reason to expect decent orders from fellow countrymen. Utzon resorted to a way common among architects to wait out the dark times - he began to build a house for himself in Mallorca. In 1972, on the recommendation of Leslie Martin, one of the jury members of the Sydney Competition, Utzon and his son Jan were commissioned to draft the National Assembly in Kuwait. Built on the shores of the Persian Gulf, this Assembly resembles the Sydney Opera: it also has two halls, located side by side, and in the middle is a canopy-like roof, under which, according to Utzon, Kuwaiti lawmakers could relax in the cool under the whisper of air conditioners. Although some have accused Utzon of never completing what he started, the building was completed in 1982 but almost entirely destroyed during the 1991 Iraqi invasion. The newly rebuilt Assembly no longer sports Scandinavian crystal chandeliers and gilding over Utzon's austere teak interior, and its indoor courtyard has been converted into a car park. In Denmark, Utzon designed a church, a furniture store, a telephone booth, a garage with a defiant reprise of the glass walls of the Opera - that's probably all. The highly publicized project of the theater in Zurich was never realized, but this is not Utzon's fault. Its architecture, using standardized building blocks, which are then laid according to the sculptural principle, has not found many followers: it is good from an aesthetic, not from a commercial point of view, and has nothing to do with primitive in design and camouflaged "classicism" towers, in such the abundance that emerged in the postmodern era.

Of all the attractions in Australia, the Sydney Opera House attracts the most tourists. Even before the Olympics, it became one of the most famous buildings in the world. The Sydney people would gladly get rid of the pompous tinsel of the 60s and finish the Opera the way Utzon wanted - money is not a problem for them today. But the train left. The Mallorca recluse is no longer the young dreamer who won the competition. Utzon's reluctance to see his disfigured brainchild is understandable. True, last year he nevertheless agreed to sign a certain vague document, on the basis of which it is planned to develop a project for the restoration of the Opera worth 35 million pounds. According to this document, the chief architect of the construction will be Utzon's son, Jan. But a great masterpiece cannot be created from someone else's words, even if these are the words of Utzon himself. His Opera House with a gigantic stage and stunning beauty of the interior has forever remained only a wonderful idea, which was not destined to be realized.

Perhaps this could not have been avoided. Like all great artists, Utzon strives for perfection, believing that this is exactly what the customer and his own conscience require of him. But architecture rarely becomes an art, it is more akin to a business that seeks to meet conflicting demands, and even at the lowest cost. And we must be grateful to fate that a rare union of an atheist visionary and a naive provincial city gave us a building whose appearance is almost perfect. "You will never get tired of him, he will never bore you," Utzon predicted in 1965. He was right: it really would never happen.

Notes:
* Cenotaph - an obelisk in London, erected in memory of those killed during the First World War. - Approx. transl.
* In New York at that time, according to his project, the building of the Trans World Airlines terminal was being built, a kind of Opera House in a modest performance.
* Strait between Denmark and Sweden. - Approx. transl.
* Utzon's name thus joined a long list of dyslexic geniuses, including Albert Einstein. * Invention by Elisha Otis of Yonkers, USA (1853).
* Second name of the Pompidou Center in Paris. - Approx. ed.
* Currently, Utzon still lives outside, in Mallorca, where he leads a secluded and withdrawn lifestyle.
* Cahill rushed to build, spurred on by deteriorating health and criticism of parliamentary opposition.

The Sydney Opera House is the most recognizable and most famous building in the world. It is located in one of the major Australian cities and is one of the main attractions of the continent.

The Sydney Opera House has been recognized as one of the most significant buildings in the world, along with the Harbor Bridge Bridge, also located in Sydney.

The Opera House is located in Sydney Harbor, along Bennelong Point Street. At present, it is difficult to imagine Sydney without an opera, but until 1958 inclusive, the building housed a tram depot, and before it a fort.

The roof of the building has sail-like shells, due to which there is not a single analogue monument of architecture in the whole world.

Construction and architect of the Sydney Opera House

The architect of the building is Jorn Utzon, who hails from the Danish hinterland. At that time, the construction project seemed practically impossible for the builders, but despite the work of the workers, the opera house was erected.

At the initial stage, it was planned to build 2 large halls, but during the construction process, the project underwent significant changes, which only won in the future.

It was believed that the construction of the Opera would take 4 years and cost $ 7 million. But due to misunderstandings, intrigues and various kinds of strife, it turned out that the construction was carried out for 14 years, and the cost increased 15 times and exceeded $ 100 million.

Following the implementation of the project, the Danish architect was awarded the Pitzker Prize and the highest architectural award for 2003.

Description of the theater

The opera is divided into three main performance halls:

The 2679-seat Concert Hall is home to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and houses the world's largest working mechanical organ, with over 10,000 pipes.
The 1507-seat Opera Hall is home to the Sydney Opera House and the Australian Ballet.
The 544-seat drama hall is home to the Sydney Theater Company and other dance and theater groups.

But the number of rooms is not limited to this, the Opera has many other less significant halls and studios.

For example, in the cafe you can try the freshest burgers and seafood dishes. At the bar, enjoy the finest cocktails, wines and snacks. Enjoy lunch at Mozart's bistro. And in a separate banquet hall, order a celebration of a family celebration or a cooperative. And all this with a gorgeous view of the bay.

To attend the show, you do not need an evening dress and high-heeled shoes, as we always think.

For example, local indigenous people can easily come to a musical in jeans and a T-shirt, and sometimes barefoot. But nevertheless, it is worth dressing up for going out, it will add significance to such an event.

In addition, Opera offers various types of training and interactive excursions. By the way, tuition is free for students this year.

Trainings and master classes are held in order to attract young people to art, to help them find exactly what they need. Teachers also undergo confirmation and improvement of their knowledge and skills here.

In fairness, it should be noted that with the construction of the Opera House in Australia, art forms such as opera, ballet, theater and playing in a symphony orchestra began to develop more and more.

More than 1,500 performances are held here annually, which are attended by a total of 1.2 million people. More than 7 million tourists visit the opera house every year, making the building the most popular attraction on the Australian continent.

During its short life, the Opera won the title of World Art Center. In June 2007, she was added to the World Heritage List.

From October 2013 to March 2014, as part of the 40th anniversary celebration, a grand show was staged on the site in front of the main entrance. For example, Sting gave several concerts, and the Royal Mint issued 2 coins of 1 dollar denomination with the image of the Opera - in silver and bronze.

Opera House entrance fee

General excursion with a visit to the stage and stage, as well as other premises of the theater

$ 35 - for an adult;
$ 12.5 - for a child.

Tours run from 9 am to 5 pm

The Sydney Opera House has a policy of general accessibility, so that people of different social status can afford to visit this beautiful place. Therefore, the theater administration provides various ways to get to them.

Getting here is not difficult at all, and since it is located right on the water, the most popular way is by ferry. You can also get there by train, and take a bus to the building itself.

There is a free bus for retirees and sedentary people, but the number of seats on it is limited, so you have to wait until the turn comes. It is better to check the schedule - for example, buses do not work on Sunday evenings. They leave 45 minutes before the start of the show, and after it ends, they leave within 10 minutes. You can also get on a bike, for these visitors there is a parking lot for cycling.