AS THE Sydney Opera House took shape in the late 1960s people in Melbourne, Australia’s second-biggest city, sniggered at dramas over construction problems and cost blowouts. But the opera house went on to become Australia’s most iconic building, and one of the great architectural wonders of the 20th century. This year it is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its opening in 1973.
Yet Melburnians are feeling a bit smug once again. This is because Arts Centre Melbourne, the city's main cultural venue, is now staging a lavish production of Richard Wagner's four-opera Ring Cycle, which began on November 18th. It is the first Ring production in the 57-year history of Opera Australia, the country's main opera company, based in Sydney. With an estimated budget of A$20m ($18.6m), it is also the company's biggest venture.
Melbourne is hosting the Ring Cycle partly owing to cost. This production's biggest supporter is a Melburnian and a Wagner fan: Maureen Wheeler, co-founder with her husband Tony of the “Lonely Planet” publishing outfit, kick-started the Ring’s planning three years ago with a A$5m gift. But there is another reason: the auditorium at the Sydney Opera House is too small. Its imperfections date from foolhardy planning interventions by the New South Wales state government 47 years ago. The legacy has left a standing joke: “Australia has the best opera house in the world. The exterior is in Sydney and the interior is in Melbourne.”
A confidential state government report last year delivered a blunt warning about this legacy. It cited a study that placed Sydney’s opera theatre at the bottom of international rankings for opera on 14 criteria. Outdated equipment, sub-standard acoustics and a deficient stage-size were among them. Unless the Sydney house’s interior is brought up to 21st-century technical standards, the report said, “the building will inevitably decline further to a point where it may cease to be functional”.
Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect, won an international competition for the opera house’s design in 1957. His revolutionary vision of soaring, sail-like roofs harmonized with the building’s harbour location. Under the sails, Mr Utzon designed a large hall capable of staging orchestral concerts and operas, and a smaller one mainly for drama. But after he had worked on the building in Sydney for nine years, the then conservative state government forced Mr Utzon out in 1966 amid rows over costs. Daryl Dellora, author of “Utzon and the Sydney Opera House”, a new book, calls this a “triumph of base politics over art”. The government installed a committee of local architects to finish the job. They switched the halls’ functions, allocating the big hall just to concerts and pushing opera and ballet into the smaller hall, with a cramped orchestra pit and poorer acoustics.
Mr Utzon died in Denmark in 2008, aged 90, without ever returning to Australia, or seeing his finished flawed masterpiece. But a decade earlier, the then-Labor state government had approached Mr Utzon seeking reconciliation. In a bid to right past wrongs, it invited him to become the opera house’s design consultant. Mr Utzon accepted. Those who met him then found him anything but bitter. Mr Utzon told Richard Johnson, a distinguished Sydney architect, that he felt lucky to have got as far as he did with such a daring project. “He said it could only have happened in the new world, from a place that felt optimistic and was trying to make a statement about its future,” Mr Johnson recalls.
In his new role, Mr Utzon prepared refurbishment plans for the opera theatre to create more seats, a wider stage and an expanded orchestra pit capable of holding 104 musicians, about 35 more than it does now. Jan Utzon, Mr Utzon’s architect son, has travelled to Sydney about 30 times in the last 14 years to liaise with the opera house and the state government over his father’s refurbishment vision. In Sydney recently for 40th birthday celebrations, he said he hoped they could be realised in time for the 50th bash.
That could depend on whether Sydney has learned from its mistakes about political squabbles over money. The opera house cost A$102m to build. The state government report last year estimated the cost of rebuilding the opera theatre alone at almost six times that figure. Together with revamping the complex’s concert hall and three drama theatres, the total cost would be A$825m.
The state government that commissioned the opera house in 1957 paid for it by launching a public lottery in its name. Revisiting that option would be awkward: the state’s lotteries have since been privatised. Hopes for funding the renovations would seem to rest on the federal and New South Wales governments sharing costs. A recent survey showed 77% of Australians supported that idea. So far, there are no signs of it happening.
Meanwhile Lyndon Terracini, artistic director of Opera Australia, calls for a different solution to Sydney’s opera problems. He proposes leaving the inadequate opera theatre intact and building a second but bigger one underground, beneath Sydney’s botanical gardens facing the opera house. In the meantime, Mr Terracini plans to repeat the Ring season every three years, but only in Melbourne.
Much is at stake in fixing the opera house inside. Utzon’s white sails draw about 8m visitors a year. Many never see the faults underneath; others are prepared to forgive them. Access Economics, a consultancy, estimates the opera house contributes about A$734m a year to the Australian economy, from performances and its status as the country’s biggest tourist destination. Yoko Ono, a Japanese-American conceptual artist, and widow of John Lennon, says Utzon’s design inspired some pieces in her exhibition “War is Over! (if you want it)”, which opened recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia near the opera house.
There are signs of hope. After Utzon was re-engaged, two parts of the opera house were adapted to his original plans. Walls on the building’s western foyers were removed, and their vision opened up to Sydney Harbour. A small function room was rebuilt to his initial design and named the Utzon Room. Can the same happen to the opera theatre? “The wheels of change are slow,” says Mr Dellora. “But they have begun to turn.”
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