Furthermore, many of the seats in the Concert Hall have very poor views.īut what is worst is that the acoustics in the two major halls are awful, and always have been. Moreover, the opera company cannot use sets from touring productions, because there are no wings to move scenery on and off the stage, necessitating one-off designs. The Opera Theatre has very cramped space for the orchestra. Indeed, the Sydney Theatre Company argued against using the Drama Theatre and they eventually got their own theatre in a converted warehouse on the other side of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. However, the complex has been plagued by problems as a performance venue. Visitors flock to the site, given its spectacular habour-side location and Sydney would not be Sydney without it. It has four resident companies: Opera Australia, the Australian Ballet, the Sydney Theatre Company, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, unlike the tram sheds that previously occupied the site (the Fort Macquarie Tram Depot). The Opera House has since become iconic, of course, being one of the most recognized buildings in the world. I guess that this makes it as much a monument to successful gambling as to music. The New South Wales state government even had to institute a governmental lottery (the Opera House Lottery) to pay for it. The building was finally opened in 1973 at a final cost of $A102 million. Here, I use a network to explore the problems with these acoustics.Ĭonstruction started in 1959 and was scheduled to be completed in 1963 at a cost of $A7 million. įor a catalog of some of the comments about the acoustics by performers, see Darryn King's article: This is not an opera house: beautiful on the outside - the tragedy of Bennelong Point. Recently, in a ranking by Limelight magazine of 20 performance halls for classical music in Australia, ranked by the professionals who have to play in them repeatedly, the Concert Hall came 18th and the Opera Theatre came 20th (ie. Indeed, in the late 1970s I went to a talk by Peter Hall, who had eventually taken over the design of the building interior, who said that the first job he was given was to decide exactly what shade of white the exterior tiles should be!Īs was noted at the time of its completion: "It was a brilliant conception, but fatally flawed." In fact, it had, and still has, many flaws but the one being referred to is the acoustics. Growing up in Sydney in the 1960s (as I did) meant watching the politically ludicrous construction of the Sydney Opera House, a building now celebrating its 40th birthday.
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