We loaded up at 8:15 for our tour to the Sydney Opera House. Alex, our guide, was SOOOO dramatic and wonderful! He obviously loves his job. In the 60s someone had the idea to build a world class opera house and the competition began. Finally this warehouse site at the harbor was chosen. A Danish architect named Utsen won the competition with his revolutionary design, inspired by orange slices, put back to back. When he won, over 233 entries, however, he had no idea how to construct it. He was here for the foundation part but then went back to Denmark. The Finnish architect Saarenin, was one of the judges. It was to cost $7 million and take 3 years. It ended up costing $102 million and was finished in 1973!!! New South Wales started a lottery, as tax payers didn’t want to pay for this, and it paid for the whole thing.
All the foyers face north, because we’re below the equator so that would give the most light. All the plate glass (LOTS of it) came from France, triple paned, and the tiles are Swedish. He had us guess how many tiles - only 1,056,006!! The panels are in a chevron pattern, after somebody’s wife’s dress, I think. They were assembled on the ground and then lifted by cranes in place. The tiles clean themselves when it rains.
Utsen never returned to see the finished product. However, his son is now here supervising an expansion. To begin with there were 3 levels underground. They are renovating down to 10 levels!!! There is now a tunnel so the trucks for the operas, etc., can drive straight in to unload the sets. The opera house does a rotating schedule of 5 operas in one week, with the crew changing the sets each day for performances, 8/week. There are 2000+ performances of some kind every year. Oprah did a spectacular show here that they built an outside stage for in her final season. Hugh Jackman did a zip line entrance from the top of the opera house to her stage, and ended up crashing headfirst into her set! The show went on!
He took us into first the big concert hall where I will view the symphony on Friday. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures or videos. It is a spectacular hall! Three species of wood make up the whole thing. No microphones are used - the is an array of rings above the orchestra that reflects the sound so they can hear each other. A huge organ is mounted on the wall with over 10,000 pipes. Next we visited the theatre where the operas are performed (and other performances). There was a net over the orchestra pit. Alex told a funny story about an opera being performed where there were about a dozen live chickens (I think it was a very serious Russian one like Boris Gudenov). During this dark, tragic story, the chickens got loose and ended up falling into the orchestra pit! Laughter erupted as the audience thought it was part of the story! The opera was stopped, the orchestra stopped playing and the musicians all threw the chickens back onstage! Ever since, there has been a net across the pit to protect the musicians and their instruments.
When we were out in the foyer, standing on the bright purple carpet, Alex told a story about when Luciano Pavarotti was performing. They planned a reception out in the foyer but when Luciano saw the purple, this was a very bad luck color for him. He refused to put a step on it! He was sure it would taint his performance. The staff carried him across and to the other side where the foyer carpet was red. Everything was fine for his performance. I guess that’s what being a diva means! I remember hearing a story about an opera diva at the Metropolitan Opera in New York when I did the backstage tour there. She didn’t like the carpet in her dressing room, thought it would hurt her throat. So they ripped it out and put in new!!!
We saw close-up details of the tiles covering the roof of the house - tan rectangles and white glossy squares. Lots of concrete! My architect friend Larry really needs to see this! He’d find it so interesting!! The windows have to be cleaned every month, inside and out and it takes 2 weeks to do it.
Later we did a night harbor tour and saw the opera house beautifully lit up in red for Chinese New Year, the year of the sheep/ram. Thousands of vacationing Chinese were all over the place. In the market near the hotel I saw a band led by Lion Dancers parading through.
The symphony performance at the opera house was Schuman’s 3rd and 4th symphonies. It lasted about 1.5 hours and tickets were $50. Maybe 15 of the group went. We took the 555 free bus up George St. to the house. We went early as there was to be a tea ahead of time. One of the guards told me there was a 45 minute talk before about the pieces to be played so I headed up but it was not until Saturday. I asked an usher where my entrance gates was. I sat down with a cup of water and cookies and couldn’t remember what I’d done with my ticket! I went back to that usher and she said, “are you Susan?” she had found my ticket on the floor and given it to the usher at my Door. It even had the receipt attached so I’d been out of luck! All was good and the performance and acoustics were wonderful. I met Josh on the trip who plays oboe and French horn with the Radio City Music Hall orchestra (for 40 years!) so I especially paid attention to that section - there were 4 of them, it looked like.
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