Sydney is a showy city – a harbor, a fabulous bridge, world-class beaches and surfing. Opportunity to spend a whole lot of money abounds at all of these places. The Harbour Bridge Climb costs more than $200 for a single adult. I turned that down, especially since I do not like heights, and a pedestrian walkway goes all the way across, anyway. Surfing holds a mild fascination for me, but I understand that once I step into the ocean, I become part of a food chain of which I am not on top, and how can I count the cost of the loss of a limb? Having grown up land-locked, I do not sail.
But.
The Sydney Opera House is an entirely different matter. Not only is the building a fascinating work of art, it plays host to about 1,500 events annually, everything from Don Giovanni to Janet Jackson. The campaign for a proper opera house was started by Eugene Goossens, who was director of the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music in the 1940s. At that time, the symphony performed at Sydney Town Hall. It took until the mid-50s, though, when the right NSW Premier came along who would actually budget funds for it, to launch an architectural competition for a building. Funny thing – the design by Danish architect Jorn Utzon (pictured above right) that the entire world identifies with Australia was overlooked initially. Those sails were a radical design. An interesting bit of trivia: the design was pulled out of the pile of rejected entries. But, it was declared the winner, and planning commenced. Timeline and budget: Four years, $7 million. Actual timeline and budget: 16 years (1957-1973), $120 million (a cost overrun of 1,400 per cent). Utzon resigned in 1963 over arguments about budget (new political administration), was not acknowledged as the architect when Queen Elizabeth II opened the house in 1973, and died in 2008 without ever seeing his completed masterpiece in person. 
Delays and cost overruns were due to the challenge of building the roof, a design that was literally ahead of its time. No one knew how to build it. Architects and engineers considered it a series of parabolic shapes, but no amount of ciphering could yield a formula that would allow structurally sound fabrication. By the way, the design of the SOH was the first time a computer was used to assist in the construction of a building. Utzon finally solved the problem by discovering that the “sails” could be built based on a spherical (actually, hemispherical) design, like slices taken out of ½ an orange. And the roof is not really a shell – it is, rather, a series of concrete sections that were poured and assembled on site. Also, the roof really isn’t white, it’s cream and yellow, and it’s made up of 1,056,000 special triple fired, triple glazed, Swedish-made tiles. (If it was white, the roof would be blinding on a sunny day.) The tiles are in a chevron pattern, which I didn’t realize until I saw it up close. Utzon said he was inspired by a bathing suit he saw a woman wearing at the beach. He liked the way the pattern looked on curves.
The construction materials are pink granite, poured concrete, four times more steel cable than what is in the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ceramic tile, white birch, and brush box wood.
It is the only symphony hall in the world where you can sit behind the orchestra and still hear it. Oh, and Vladimir Ashkenazy happens to by the Principal Conductor and Artistic Director.
I could go on and on, because I find these things fascinating, but I’ll stop before everybody clicks back to Facebook.
I promised myself that I would see an event at the opera house while in Sydney, and I actually ended up at three, none of which were in the Concert Hall, much to my disappointment. Somewhere along the line I got the idea that the Sydney Opera actually performs at the opera house, and it does, but in the Opera Theatre. Likewise, the production of Julius Caesar that I saw was staged in the Drama Theatre. The fourth venue is the Playhouse which is a flexible black box theater where smaller or more experimental works are produced.
The very first day I was conscious in Sydney (the day I got lost in the Botanical Gardens for the first time) I headed straight to Circular Quay to find out what was on. Turns out quite a lot. Noam Chomsky, Professor of Linguistics at MIT, author, thinker, dissenter and general voice of reason, was to be awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, and was on the schedule for a Q & A. The only opera that was on during my time here was Mozart’s morality tale, Don Giovanni, which is not a favorite. Julius Caesar was being staged by Bell Shakespeare, with a woman cast as Cassius. Interesting.
So I finally go back to buy my tickets on the day that Noam Chomsky is scheduled. I approach the lobby understanding that the lecture is most likely sold out, which is confirmed by a sign posted in the lobby, but surely they still have tickets to other performances. Close to the ticket line stands a woman, off to the side. I walk up, she approaches me.
“Do you have a ticket for the program today?”
“No. I don’t. I was going to check for cancellations.”
“Would you like one?”
(Would I? Would I?) “Uh, yes. I would.”
(Would I? Would I?) “Uh, yes. I would.”
“Here. Have this one. My friend couldn’t come today.”
Good golly. A free ticket to Noam Chomsky.
To summarize what Prof. Chomsky (pictured left) said: The nut of it is that we are rushing like lemmings into the sea, led by the bankers, CEOs and politicians who don’t understand that they, too, will drown as we all take the leap together. He believes that Obama’s record is even worse than G.W. Bush’s in that he hasn’t dismantled enough of W’s policies, including the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Plus, Obama gets a failing grade on environmental issues. A brilliant man. I took notes. And my companion was charming – a former drama teacher with a daughter who is getting her PhD in Hip-Hop Studies. (wtf? academia. sheesh.) She also happens to be a marriage celebrant, and gave me her card. Just for her personal contact info. Not that I need a celebrant. Unless she knows something that I don’t.
After Chomsky, I stood in line again to get tickets to either the opera or the Shakespeare production. As it turned out, if I took a tour of the opera house that day, I could get an opera ticket for $50 (which is typically $150). I took the bait and bought the tour, which is where all the little gems of knowledge above came from. I also bought a ticket for Julius Caesar. That put me at the opera house three days in a row.
But still didn’t put me in the Concert Hall for a performance.
Well, I’ll be back in Sydney on for New Year’s. There’s always the New Year’s Eve Gala. (Riiiiight.)
