The troubled history of the construction of the Sydney Opera House began on March 2, 1959. Six years later, when BBC reporter Trevor Philpott went to see how construction was progressing, it was already years behind schedule, mired in rising costs, shifting projects and escalating political tensions.
The idea of building an opera house for the city was proposed in the late 1940s by the famous English conductor Sir Jugin Goossens. At the time, Goossens was something of a celebrity in the classical music world, having had a successful career in the UK and the US. After World War II, he was poached to Sydney to become director of the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music, promising a salary greater than that of Australia's prime minister.
Creating a new world-class music venue was the conductor's project. From his office window, he had his eye on what he thought was the ideal location - the Bennelong Point streetcar depot. The site, known to the local indigenous Gadigal Eora people as Tubougule, had been the site of Aboriginal festivities for thousands of years.
Throughout the 1950s, Goossens lobbied hard to make his dream a reality. "There were very few other people who could have that vision, articulate it and bring it to the Premier of New South Wales, be able to talk to people to get things done," says musicologist Dr. Drew Crawford.
Goossens convinced New South Wales Premier Joseph Cahill that the opera house would change the world's view of Australia, that he had found the perfect location for it, and that they should announce "a grand competition open to architects from around the world to decide what kind of building they should build here," Philpott says. "They set only one condition: no one had ever created anything this remarkable before."
Goossens himself was not destined to see his ambitions realized. In 1956, having just received a knighthood in Britain, he was detained on entering Australia, where his bags were searched and found to contain, among other things, smuggled pornography, compromising photographs and rubber masks.
The scandal, which involved romance, erotica and witchcraft, completely derailed the conductor's career in Sydney. He fled the country
to Rome under the pseudonym
Mr. E Gray and never returned.
Nevertheless, the design competition went ahead as planned and the jury evaluated some 233 submissions. In early 1957, the government announced that the surprise winner was the little-known Danish architect Utzon. Part of Utzon's success was due to the fact that his work consisted mainly of preliminary sketches and conceptual drawings.
"When it comes to building anything large-scale, it hasn't done much," Sir Jack Zunz, who worked on the project at civil engineering firm Arup, said in 2018.
An optimistic start
The judges' choice of Utzon's boldly creative project was not without controversy. "From the outset it caused astonishment and fierce resentment among Sydney residents," Philpott says. "He was called the monster of Sydney Harbour, a piece of Danish dough, a disintegrating circus tent."
Prime Minister Cahill, fearing that the project might be derailed by negative public opinion or political opposition, insisted that construction work begin as soon as possible. This was despite the fact that Utzon was still finalizing the design of the building and had not resolved critical structural issues.
Although Utzon's project was considered one of the cheapest, there were still fundraising problems, so a state lottery was launched in 1957 to help fund the project.
The original estimate for the final cost of the Sydney Opera House was 3.5 million pounds sterling or 7 million Australian dollars - at the time, the official currency of Australia was the pound sterling, but it was changed to the dollar in 1966. The building was scheduled to open on January 26, 1963: Australia Day. Both of these predictions turned out to be wildly and hopelessly optimistic.
The construction of the Opera House was divided into three separate phases: the erection of the podium, the roof and the interior.
After convincing the transportation minister to agree to demolish the streetcar depot to build the catwalk, Cahill "discovered that the site was not large enough or strong enough to carry this structure, which on paper seemed light enough," Philpott says.
To support the weight of the Opera House, the entire site had to be expanded and reinforced by driving more than 550 concrete shafts with steel casings, each one meter in diameter, into the ground in and around Sydney Harbour. This massive work, which was neither budgeted for nor timed for construction, was delayed, hampered by bad weather. The catwalk was not completed until January 1963, the Opera House's original opening date.
Photo: bbc.com
But this was only the first of the project's delays and exorbitant additional costs. The Opera House's most distinctive feature - its roof imitating the sails of a ship - caused a number of other engineering problems.
The original plan was to make the roof out of steel covered with concrete. However, this construction created unwanted noise problems for any performance. "The Opera House stars would sing along to the sound of tugboat sirens on the water outside, and temperature fluctuations would make the metal and concrete rattle and crackle like thunder," Philpott says.
Impossible building
No one fully understood the magnitude of the engineering challenge posed to the Opera House by the bold curved surfaces of the roof. Since Utzon's design lacked detailed engineering plans, the civil engineering firm Arup was engaged to design the complex roof structure.
But although they tried a number of different options, they were unable to put the structural calculations together. "The first thing Arup did when they were asked to collaborate was to take these free forms and develop a series of mathematical models that, as far as possible, matched Utzon's competitive design. None of these shapes turned out to be buildable," says Zunz.
Another problem was that because the roof was curved, each concrete rib supporting it had to be different. This meant that instead of one mold that could be reused to cast all the supporting beams, a separate one was needed for each individual rib. This was prohibitively expensive.
The answer, Utzon later claimed, came to him while peeling an orange. The architect realized that all the segments of the roof could be derived from the geometry of a single sphere. By determining which part of the sphere best fit the desired shapes, a series of triangles with a single curved side could be cut from it, creating a variety of shells.
These segments of the spherical shell could be broken down into individual components that could be pre-cast evenly with concrete and assembled on site. He came back a week later and said: "I've solved this problem." "And he made a circuit out of a sphere," Zunz says. "But in doing so, he changed the architecture quite radically."
This elegant solution simplified the roof structure and reduced waste, allowing construction of the vaulted roof to begin in 1963. But while contractors worked to realize Utzon's vision, the project was haunted by labor disputes, design changes, and rising material costs, causing its budget to balloon and a potential completion date to fade into the distance.
"By 1962 the cost had risen to ?12.5 million," says Philpott. "The opening day was postponed and postponed again. It was scheduled for Australia Day 1963, it was pushed back to early 1964, then 1966, and after that no one dared even predict what year the doors would eventually open."
The project's biggest supporter, Premier Cahill, fell ill just months after construction began. On his deathbed in 1959, he made Public Relations Minister Norman Ryan promise not to let the Opera House construction fail.
In 1965, Ryan fervently defended the project, but by then the frustration of rising costs and endless delays was palpable. "At the time, I wasn't sure if I should admit to working on it," Zunz admitted. "If you got in a cab, you were told about how much money was being wasted and God knows what else."
In addition, Robert Askin, who had actively opposed the project, was elected Premier of New South Wales. He appointed Davis Hughes, who had repeatedly clashed with Utzon, as the new Minister for Public Affairs. Hughes, determined to curb costs, began challenging them and the architect's schedules, demanding a full set of working drawings of the interiors, the next stage of the project.
Hughes also refused payments demanded by the construction team, leaving Utzon unable to pay his employees. In 1966, the Danish architect withdrew from the project and left Australia, never returning to see his Opera House completed.
Photo: bbc.com
Utzon's resignation caused a public outcry: on March 3, 1966, thousands of people took to the streets of Sydney to demand his reinstatement. Instead, Hughes appointed a new team of Australian architects to complete the interior finishes as well as erect glass walls. But if Hughes thought this would cut costs and speed up the project, he was sorely mistaken.
Overcoming challenges
The new team reworked most of Utzon's plans for the interior and radically altered them. Utzon had envisioned the dual purpose of the main hall as an opera house and concert hall, but this was now deemed unfeasible, necessitating the demolition of already installed equipment. The new design also meant that each of the hundreds of pieces of glass in the interior walls had to be cut to a unique size and shape, which continued to drive up costs.
The construction of the Sydney Opera House became even more expensive when in 1972 a labor dispute among union workers over the dismissal of a worker and demands for higher wages resulted in a sit-in at the construction site.
But the following year, the monumental undertaking of building the Sydney Opera House was finally completed. Ten years late and 14 times over the original budget, the building cost 102 million Australian dollars.
It was officially opened by Queen
Elizabeth II on October 20, 1973. She praised the stunning building, which had "
captured the imagination of the whole world," but wryly remarked that "
I realize that its construction was not entirely without problems."
Utzon refused to attend the opening, writing to Prime Minister Askin that he "does not see anything positive" in the Australian architects' work on the interior and he would not be able to "avoid making extremely negative statements".
Eventually, the Danish architect thawed out and in 1999 he rejoined the Sydney Opera House project, agreeing to work on the interior renovation for 66 million Australian dollars. In September 2004, the Reception Hall was renamed Utzon Hall in his honor after it was remodeled to his design.
In the years since its completion, recognition of the Sydney Opera House's architecture has only grown. Its distinctive sculptural form has made it one of the most easily recognizable buildings in the world. With more than 10.9 million visitors each year, it has come to represent Australian national identity and its soaring roof is a celebration of creativity, culture and ambition in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Photo: tripadvisor.ru
Everyone from
Bob Dylan,
Ella Fitzgerald and
Sammy Davis Jr to The Cure, Bjork and Massive Attack have performed here. In 1980,
Arnold Schwarzenegger won his last bodybuilding title here, and 10 years later, anti-apartheid leader
Nelson Mandela delivered one of his first major speeches from the steps of this building after his release from prison.
In 2004, Kathy Freeman, the first Aboriginal athlete to win an Olympic gold medal, unveiled the baton on the side of the building. Its attractive roof is lit up annually as part of Vivid Sydney, the city's festival of light, music and ideas, and in 2017 it was projected with Indigenous Australian stories told in colorful animations.
In 2007, the Sydney Opera House building, created through a combination of beauty, engineering and hard work, was officially recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.
In recommending its inclusion, the International Council on Monuments and Sites stated, "The Sydney Opera House is in itself one of the undisputed masterpieces of human creativity, not only in the 20th century but in human history."