Sydney Harbour and the Opera House; February 17

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

A busy day!  We began with a very well-done lecture on the history and geography of Australia, given by a professor of history from the University of Western Sydney.  He crammed an enormous amount of information into a long hour, and was excellent.  He also gave us an introduction to the history of railroads in Australia so that we have some idea of what the trains we’ll be taking derived from.

We then took a long boat tour of much of Sydney Harbor, which has a shoreline of 240 km.  There was a narrated commentary which was very helpful, and the whole thing is very well done.  The views from the boat were striking.  Here’s a panorama of the city:

There is a very large number of extraordinary homes on the water, many with a great view of downtown, the bridge and the opera house.  Here’s one:

After lunch at a local restaurant, we had a walking tour of the area called “The Rocks” which was an early settled part of Sydney, now mostly shops and restaurants.  Yet remnants of colonial Australia remain, such as this series of stores called “Candle Stores” after the man who built them.  A long story, including stories of Captain Bligh, the same Captain who was mutinied on the Bounty.

Chinese New Year is coming up, and the city is full of events and exhibits celebrating.  Here’s a small army of Chinese lanterns in the form of the terracotta warriors:

Finally we walked to the Opera House where we had an extensive private tour for our group.  We saw two videos about the design and construction and walked the whole complex.  It’s an astonishing story, which begins in 1955 with the conductor Eugene Goosens (conductor of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra from 1923-1931) who was at the time conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and dreamt of a special concert hall for his orchestra.  There were 233 plans submitted to the jury selected to pick the winner, and the famous architect Eero Saarinen who was on the jury, arrived late to the deliberations.  The jury had discarded all but a small number of submissions, all of which Saarinen found very ordinary.  He retrieved the discarded submissions, found this very daring one from the Danish architect Joern Utzon, and persuaded the jury to select it even though it was mostly sketches and not at all developed.  The budget for construction was $7 million, and the timetable 3 years.  The story goes on and on, but ultimately it was deemed unbuildable.  Finally, in consultation with the engineer Arove Arup, a building plan was developed using cast concrete ribs with the “sails” being formed of parts of spheres.  Before it was complete, Utzon left, and it took 16 years and $102 million to get it done.

It is spectacular.  Unbelievably spectacular.  There are two primary large music halls, one for symphony (2690 seats) and one, named for Dame Joan Sutherland, for opera (1547 seats).  There are three smaller spaces for theater performances.  We’ll be attending a performance of Tosca tomorrow night.

Here are some of the more than 20,000 ribs:

Here are the tiles on the outside:

Here is the public area of the symphony hall (somewhat like the bridge of a ship):

And here is the inside of the symphony hall

The opera theater looks just like the symphony hall but smaller.

It was a wonderful and extraordinary tour which gave us a great insight into the creation of what the Aussies say is the most recognized building in the world.  It could be!

Off to dinner in Chinatown.  More tomorrow.