Sydney is the oldest and most beautiful city in Australia. Today it is impossible to imagine without Sydney Opera House. Since the opening of this majestic Opera, this building has been recognized as a symbol of this extraordinary city.
Opera House in Sydney
The Sydney Opera House is located in beautiful place, on Cape Bennelong, near the Harbor Bridge. Before the construction of the opera, a fort was located in this area, and after it a transport depot.
The construction of the opera house started in 1959 and dragged on for 4 years. First presented sydney theater Elizabeth II, Queen of England 20 October 1973
Designed the opera famous architect Jorn Utzon. The construction of the opera house is located on an area of 2.2 hectares, its length is 185 meters, and its width is 120.
In the construction of the opera house there are about a dozen halls of different sizes for all kinds of gatherings. There are 2.5 thousand seats in the concert hall, 1.5 thousand seats in the opera hall, and in the hall drama theater over 500 seats, and there are also a couple of halls small size, one of the halls is located in the courtyard under the open sky.
In addition to these halls, the Sydney Opera House has 2 stages and many entertainment venues. Free performances and concerts are continuously held in front of the theater on the square. Here you can listen to national music.
At the same time, up to 4 different performances can be held in the theater on different stages.
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On the territory of the opera there are 6 bars and 4 restaurants, here after the end of the performance, and during the intermission, visitors can refresh themselves and drink refreshing cocktails. There are also numerous souvenir shops for tourists.
In Sydney Opera theatre is one of the extraordinary structures of modern architecture. The property of the Sydney Opera House is the curtain, which is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the largest on the planet. And another property of the opera house is the largest organ on the planet, with 10,500 pipes, which is also listed in the Guinness Book of Records.
Experts calculated that since the opening of the opera, almost 40 million people have visited it. tourists from various countries, which exceeds the number of residents of all of Australia.
Entrance inside the building is free, but visiting the opera itself is very problematic. You need to buy a ticket for the opera in a couple of months, the pricing policy is quite high.
For visitors, there are guided tours - every day from 9 to 17 hours. In addition, every morning, at 7 am, they organize a performance with breakfast.
In 2007, the World Organization for the Protection of Monuments of Architecture UNESCO included the Sydney Theater in its famous register.
»The Sydney Opera House is the symbol of the big city australia
(English Sydney Opera House) - one of the most famous and recognizable buildings in the world, is a symbol of Australia's largest city - Sydney. The sail roof makes this Musical Theatre unlike any other in the world.
Opera House in Sydney recognized as one of the greatest structures in modern architecture and is calling card cities and continents. Its opening took place on October 20, 1973 in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain.
The Sydney Opera House is in the harbor at Bennelong Point. This name comes from the name of a local aborigine and friend of the first governor of Australia. Previously, there was a fort on this site, and until 1958, a tram depot.
The Danish architect Jorn Utzon became the architect of the opera house, and in 2003 he received the Pritzker Prize for his project.
Despite the ease of manufacture and installation of parts for spherical shells, the construction of the building was delayed, the reason was interior decoration premises. According to the plan, the construction of the theater was supposed to take no more than four years and cost about 7 million Australian dollars, but the opera was built for 14 years and cost 102 million Australian dollars.
Hundreds of the world's best musicians perform at the Sydney Opera House every year. If you love music and enjoy playing musical instruments, then here you can find and buy sound equipment from the world's best manufacturers.
The Sydney Opera House was built in an expressionist style with innovative design elements. It is 185 meters long and 120 meters wide. The opera house covers an area of 2.2 hectares. The weight of the building is approximately 161 thousand tons, it is based on 580 piles driven into the water to a depth of 25 m. The electricity consumed by the building is equivalent to a city with 25 thousand people.
The roof of the theater consists of 2194 sections, its height is 67 m, and its weight is about 27 tons. The whole structure is supported by cables 350 km long. The roof of the opera is made in the form of a series of shells, but it is usually called sails or shells, which is not true from the point of view of architectural design. These shells are made from triangular concrete panels that are attached to 32 prefabricated ribs.
The roof of the building is covered with 1,056,006 azulejo tiles in white and matte cream. From a distance, the roof looks pure white, but under different lighting conditions, you can see different color schemes. With the help of a mechanical way of laying tiles, the roof surface turned out to be perfect, which was impossible to achieve manually.
The largest vaults form the roof of the Concert Hall and the Opera Theatre. Other halls form smaller vaults. The interior of the building is made using pink granite, wood and plywood.
The green continent is famous all over the world not only for kangaroos, koalas, warm ocean and bronze gods of surfing. There are also unique structures. At Cape Bennelong, like a fantastic sailboat, a mass of concrete and glass rises. It's famous all over. In Sydney every day you can see a lot of tourists. And be sure that one half of them have already seen a unique building, and the other will certainly visit it in the near future.
New miracle
If foreigners easily recognize Moscow by Red Square, the Mausoleum, then the quaint opera house undoubtedly resurrects Sydney in our imagination. Photos of this attraction can be seen on any souvenir from Australia. The snow-white mass towering over the harbor has become one of the masterpieces of world architecture. The building has not only a catchy exterior, but also a curious history.
in numbers
The height of the building is 67 meters. The length of the building is 185 meters, and the distance at its widest point is 120 m. The weight, according to the calculations of engineers, is 161,000 tons, and the area is 2.2 hectares. There are about 1 million tiles on the roof slopes. In addition to the two largest halls, there are more than 900 rooms. At the same time, the theater can accommodate approximately 10,000 spectators. The Sydney Opera House is visited by 4 million people a year.
A bit of history
Australia has never been the center musical culture. By the beginning of the 20th century, the mainland had its own Symphony Orchestra but he did not have his own premises. Only when Eugene Goossens received the position of chief director, they started talking about it out loud. However, military and postwar period not conducive to the beginning of large-scale projects. Only by the middle of the twentieth century, in 1955, the government issued a building permit. But no funds were allocated from the budget. The search for investors began in 1954 and did not stop throughout the construction. In the competition for best project works were presented by 233 architects. Already at this stage, it became clear where the new musical theater would be built. In Sydney, of course.
Most of the applications were rejected by the jury, but one of the members of the commission - Eero Saarinen - actively advocated for some unfortunate applicant. It turned out to be a native of Denmark - Jorn Utzon. 4 years were allotted for the implementation of the project, the budget amounted to 7 million dollars. Despite plans, by the end of the 1960s, the Sydney Opera House was still under construction. The architect was accused of not meeting the estimate and not being able to translate his plans into reality. With sin in half, the construction was nevertheless completed. And in 1973, Queen Elizabeth II took part in the opening of the theater. Instead of four years required for construction, the project required 14, and instead of 7 million of the budget - 102. Be that as it may, the building was built to last. Even after 40 years of repair, he still did not need.
The architectural style of the theater
In the post-war period, the so-called international style reigned in architecture, the favorite forms of which were gray concrete boxes for a purely utilitarian purpose. Australia also followed this trend. in Sydney was a happy exception. It was in the 50s that the world got tired of monotony and a new style began to gain popularity - structural expressionism. His great supporter was Eero Saarinen, thanks to whom the little-known Dane conquered Sydney. Photos of this theater can now be found in any textbook on architecture. The building is a classic example of expressionism. The design for that time was innovative, but in the era of the search for fresh forms, it came in handy.
According to the requirement of the government, the premises had to have two halls. One was intended for opera, ballet and symphony concerts, the second - for chamber music and dramatic performances. The architect designed the Sydney Opera House in fact from two buildings, and not from the same number of halls. It is noteworthy that in fact it is devoid of walls. On a single base is a structure of many roofs in the shape of a sail. They are covered with white self-cleaning tiles. During festivals and holidays, grandiose light shows are arranged on the vaults of the opera.
What is inside?
Under the two largest vaults there are concert and opera zones. They are very large and have their own names. "Concert Hall" - the largest. Almost 2,700 spectators can sit here. The second largest is the Opera Hall. It is designed for 1547 people. It is decorated with the "Curtain of the Sun" - the largest in the world. There is also a "Curtain of the Moon" paired to it, located in the "Drama Hall". As the name suggests, it is intended for dramatic productions. Film screenings are held in the Playhouse. Sometimes it serves as a lecture hall. "Studio Hall" is the newest of all. Here you can join the modern theatrical art.
Wood, plywood and pink Turin granite were used in the decoration of the premises. Some interior fragments evoke associations with a ship's deck, continuing the theme of a giant ship.
Some say that the Sydney Opera House is a fantastic sailboat, others see a system of grottoes, others see pearl shells. According to one version, Utzon admitted in an interview that he was inspired to create the project by a peel carefully removed from an orange. There is a story that Eero Saarinen chose the project while drunk. Tired of the endless series of applications, the chairman of the commission simply took out a few sheets at random from a common pile. It seems that the legend did not appear without the participation of the envious Utzon.
Beautiful vaulted ceilings disturbed the acoustics in the building. Of course, this was unacceptable for the opera house. To solve the problem, internal ceilings were designed that reflect sound according to all the rules of theatrical construction.
Sadly, Utzon was not destined to see his offspring completed. After being removed from the building, he left Australia, never to return here again. Even after being awarded the prestigious architecture award in 2003, he did not come to Sydney to see the theatre. A year after the UNESCO organization assigned the status of an architect to the opera house, he died.
The Sydney Opera House
Geographical position
| latitude and longitude (decimal) : -33.856808 , 151.215264
The landscape of the largest Australian city - Sydney - is uniquely recognizable among thousands of other cities in the world thanks to just two elements: an arched bridge Harbor Bridge and the extraordinary building of the multidisciplinary theater, better known as " Opera House» ( Opera house), one of the most famous buildings in world architecture.
The Sydney Opera House recently celebrated its 40th anniversary on a grand scale, but its history begins much earlier. As early as 1954, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the New South Wales Conservatory put forward the idea of creating the Sydney Opera House. The state government has chosen a site for the future building and announced an open international competition for the best project for the opera house.
In Sydney harbor Bennelong Point once there was a fort, later there was a tram depot. It was decided to erect a spectacular building on this site, which will become the face of the city.
By December 1956, 233 applications had already been received from 28 countries. According to legend, the jury had already significantly narrowed the circle of applicants, rejecting most of the projects, when the famous American architect of Finnish origin joined the ranks of the judges. Eero Saarinen. It was he who discerned among the rejected options the “clear favorite” - the project of the Dane Jorn Utzona (Jorn Utzon), essentially insisting on his victory. On January 29, 1957, the winner was named - an expressive system of either shells or sails, drawn by Uthon. 
In the 1950s there was a change in world architectural preferences: the boring conservative-industrial “international style” with characteristic reinforced concrete “boxes” was replaced by something completely different, expressed in spectacular clean lines of curvilinear forms of clearly natural, organic origin. A new style called "structural expressionism" or "structuralism". One of his adherents was the same jury member Ero Saarinen, who insisted on the victory of the project, now considered an "icon" of structuralism. 
The architect decided to make the roofs of the Sydney Opera House from segments of a spherical shape, of constant curvature. A little later, Jorn Utzon will say that the inspiration was the peel of an orange, shot in triangular segments. The difference with the building is only in scale. An orange for the Opera House would have a diameter of 150 m, and its crust would be concrete, covered with azulejo tiles. The building covers an area of 2.2 hectares. Its length is 185, and the maximum width is 120 m.
Numerous difficulties arose during the implementation of the project, which led to delays, significant revisions of the original plan and large financial costs. Instead of the planned four years and seven million Australian dollars, the opera was under construction for fourteen years and cost $102 million (that is, it exceeded the initial budget by more than 14.5 (!) times).
The Sydney Opera House was opened on October 20, 1973 by the Queen Elizabeth II.
The perfectly flat roofs of the Sydney Opera House are covered with over a million tiles. Under different lighting, the tiles create a different color scheme and they play beautifully sun glare reflected from the water. 
The two largest vaults form the ceiling of the Concert Hall ( concert hall) and the Opera House ( opera theater). In other rooms, the ceilings form clusters of smaller vaults. In the smallest "shell" away from the main entrance and the main staircase is the Bennelong restaurant. 
Opera house has always attracted increased attention professionals. In 2003, architect Jörn Utzon was awarded the Pritzker Prize Nobel Prize in architecture).
Sydney has always been famous not only for its rich flora and fauna, but also for its architectural buildings, most of which follow European trends. But among them one building stands out, which is completely different from all the others. The name of this building is the Sydney Opera House.
Opera Sydney
The Opera House in Sydney attracts generations of tourists, being one of the most striking sights of the city. Literally everything is interesting in the opera house - from the jagged roof, the location on the water to the ascetic interior decoration. Many tourists are perplexed, how in such a chic appearance the building fits such modest ceilings and stairs. After all, it seems that there should be red carpets and golden statues here! In short, the Sydney Opera House conquers many hearts and minds, but how did its history begin?!
Appearance of Eugene Goossens
On arrival British composer there was a problem of lack of space for concerts, and this is subject to excellent hearing among Australians. Eugene Goossens was struck by the lack of interest on the part of the authorities in the construction of such a building. After all, it was practically impossible to show one's talents in the city hall - acoustics and a small hall interfered. In addition, Goossens met with a clear admiration for the ideas of Western architects, and this, in his opinion, spoiled the appearance of the whole city. After all, no one noticed the beauty of the peninsula, everyone rushed inland, where skyscrapers arose.
Goossens has always been distinguished by his desire for exquisite beauty and even luxury. He had already seen the image of the palace, in which he could not hesitate to arrange big concerts, theatrical performances, delight the audience with ballet and opera. After all, the main task is to educate, and how can such a responsible task be carried out without a special room, one that would fit 4,000 spectators. 
On fire with the idea, Goossens, along with his friend architect Kurt Langer, went to look for a place. They became Cape Bennelong Point. The place promised to be profitable, because it was visited by a large number of people, now and then changing from the ferry to the train. However, by that time Fort Macquarie was adorning the cape, behind which there was a tram depot.
The first thing Goossens turned to was Ashworth, a professor of architecture at the University of Sydney. As it turned out, in the idea of Goossens, he understood little, but introduced him to the right person– John Cahill, who lifted up the entire Australian public. So the construction operas in Sydney was soon allowed.
Start of construction
The state agreed to the construction of the theater only on the condition that it financial aid nothing is required. Therefore, in 1959 an international competition was announced. Cahill gradually lost his strength, he had many ill-wishers, whose machinations managed to send Goossens home and slow down the construction of the Opera.
However, the competition has already generated worldwide interest, with hundreds of entries submitted again and again. In addition, Goossens has already selected a jury, which included professional architects, outlined the plan and components of the Opera. In his opinion, the Sydney Opera House should include a small and large halls, as well as a hall for rehearsal and storage of props. Visitors should have tasted Sydney dishes in a sophisticated restaurant. Such an idea required large area and caused concern in the design. She was not supposed to be faceless, on the contrary, she had to be the first to be noticed on the water surface.
Dane's victory
The contestants struggled with the challenge of building on a small piece of land, and only one entry attracted all the jury members who unanimously decided that it was the winner. The Dane Jörn Watzon placed the Big and Small theaters close to each other, thanks to which the problem of walls was solved, and it was not necessary to layer several rooms, as other architects suggested. The roofs were fan-shaped and fixed on the podium, and the scenery was stored in the platform, and the backstage problem disappeared.
The architect himself great fame no different, he lived modestly with his family near Elsinore. Growing up on the sea, Jorn deeply absorbed his love for him. Perhaps that is why many people still notice the similarity of the form of the theater with the ship that set off on a long voyage.
Jorn's architectural talent developed at the Danish Royal Academy, then in Sweden. As the cities began to look more and more like each other, Jorn's value system was only taking shape. At the end educational institutions Jorn began to acquaint the world with his talent, offering to embody the most different projects. While still a student, he and his friend developed a project concert hall for Copenhagen, for which he was awarded a gold medal. Watson's works were no longer struck by majestic beauty, but by a flight of fancy. He did not have right angles and lines. On the contrary, the Dane tried to bring something original, at least fan-shaped roofs near the building of the Sydney Opera House. His work was hard to miss.
Sydney Opera - contrasts
The facade of the Opera building evokes different fantasies: some say that it is a galleon, some see nine nuns in it, a white whale or something like frozen music. Opera in Sydney really invites us to unravel its mystery, it invites us to fantasize and whatever we say will be true, because there is no single answer.
The interior of the building, on the contrary, does not fit in with such a loud name of the Opera. There is very little space here, there is almost nowhere to turn around and, alas, it is impossible to put on a big opera. There is only a small room where you can put only chamber performances, but if you slightly change its layout, it easily turns into a disco hall. Just one detail is enough in the form of a huge shiny ball on the ceiling. 
The Opera House in Sydney is also a visiting card for fans of this grandiose architectural project had to wait as much as 14 years from the start of construction to its grand opening Queen Elizabeth II of England on October 20, 1973.
The Sydney Opera House has withstood a lot of criticism: it had to be replanned, made adjustments to the original sketches, but it still delights us with its view hovering over the water, as if inviting us to soar up on its taut sails, soar up, listening to classical and contemporary music plunging into the foggy distances of art.
