The Opera House Sydney

The first to suggest the construction of a grand opera in Sydney was the British Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the end of the 1940s In 1952, Prime Minister of New South Wales approved the idea; and in 1955 a government committee chose the peninsula of Bennelong in Sydney Harbour, as the site of the future opera.


The contest, launched in early 1956, is a success; in December of that year they received 233 projects from more than 30 countries in search of a prize of $ 100,000 and critics regarded it as the most important architectural competition since the end of the war. The specified minimum criteria should contain projects were a great hall for 3000 seats and a smaller room for about 1,200 seats, each of the designs had to contain in addition spaces for great operas, concerts of orchestras, choirs, conferences, meetings, representations of different types

The winning design was announced on January 30, 1957, being winning the project presented by the Danish Jorn Utzon. Apparently, everything was against the winning project: Utzon is a young architect (38 years), little known even in their country; and even he has not submitted a complete project, but simply a set of notebooks with sketches and drawings by hand. As a curiosity we note that before the international competition for the design of the Opera House, Utzon had won seven of the eighteen contests that had been submitted, but had never seen any of his designs built

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The jury justifies his choice by explaining that sought a clear original rather than a finished solution idea. In addition, one of its members, the American architect Eero Saarinen from Finland, fascinated with drawings Utzon, convinces one to one to the other jurors of the project superiority over other competitors.

In the summer of 1957, Utzon visit Sydney for the first time to begin work with the opera firm. Await nine years of hard work practically ended their career.

In the field chosen for the construction of the complex, the old Fort Macquarie, then become tram depot, which had to be demolished in 1958. The following year construction began formally was. The building will be financed by a national lottery, and is estimated to cost about three and a half million Australian dollars, but nothing is further from reality.

On October 20, 1973, after 16 years of work, the Queen of England opened the Sydney Opera House in a ceremony attended by thousands of people. The opening ceremony was composed by fireworks and a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9