58 Fun Facts About Sydney Opera House

Which Danish architect designed the Sydney Opera House?

Jørn Utzon won the 1957 international design competition for the building; he resigned from the project in February 1966 after disputes with the New South Wales government over payments and design changes.

Who formally opened the Sydney Opera House on 20 October 1973?

Queen Elizabeth II declared the building open on 20 October 1973 from the forecourt; the televised ceremony included fireworks and a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

In which year was the original architect re-engaged as the Opera House's design consultant?

The original architect was appointed design consultant to the Opera House in 1999, ending a thirty-three-year estrangement; his design principles, published in 2002, were adopted to guide later changes to the building.

On which headland of Sydney Harbour does the Opera House stand?

Bennelong Point juts into the harbour between Sydney Cove and Farm Cove, beside the Royal Botanic Garden and facing the Harbour Bridge across Circular Quay.

What is the Opera House site called by the local Gadigal people of the Eora nation?

The Gadigal name Dubbagullee, also written Tubowgule, is glossed 'where the knowledge waters meet'; the point began as a small tidal island and was joined to the mainland with fill in the early 1800s.

The headland is named for an Aboriginal man who persuaded Phillip to build him what there?

A brick hut was built for Woollarawarre Bennelong on the point in 1790 at Governor Arthur Phillip's order; Bennelong, a Wangal man, acted as interpreter and go-between for the British and sailed to England in 1792.

What building was demolished in 1958 to clear the site for the Opera House?

The Fort Macquarie Tram Depot stood on the footprint of the original 1817 fort.

Which Sydney Symphony conductor lobbied for the Opera House and its harbourside site?

Eugene Goossens, the Sydney Symphony's chief conductor from 1947, campaigned for a purpose-built opera house and insisted on the harbourside point; the premier had preferred a site near Wynyard station in the city.

Which New South Wales premier launched the design competition and authorised construction?

Joseph Cahill, Labor premier of New South Wales from 1952 to 1959, announced the competition in 1955 and had construction begin in March 1959, seven months before his death in office.

How many entries did the 1955–57 international design competition receive?

The competition drew 233 entries from architects in 32 countries; the winning scheme, chosen in January 1957, earned its author a prize of 5,000 Australian pounds.

Which Finnish-American architect on the competition jury championed the winning entry?

Eero Saarinen, who joined the judging late, pressed fellow jurors Henry Ingham Ashworth, Cobden Parkes and Leslie Martin to award first prize to the Danish scheme in January 1957.

The roof 'shells' are all sections of a sphere of what radius?

Every shell is cut from a sphere of 75.2 metres radius; that spherical solution, settled on in 1961, let ribs of different lengths be cast in one set of moulds.

How many precast concrete sections make up the roof?

The roof's 2,194 precast concrete sections weigh up to 15 tonnes each and are held together by 350 km of tensioned steel cable; the building stands on 588 piers sunk up to 25 metres below sea level.

Roughly how many tiles cover the roof shells?

The shells carry 1,056,006 glazed tiles in two finishes, glossy white and matte cream, laid in a chevron pattern that reads as plain white from across the harbour.

The roof tiles were manufactured in which country?

The tiles came from Höganäs in Sweden, a firm that normally made stoneware tiles for the paper-mill industry; developing the 120 mm 'Sydney Tile' took about three years.

How high above sea level is the highest point of the roof?

The tallest shell reaches 67 metres above sea level, roughly the height of a 22-storey building.

The building's exterior is largely clad in panels of pink granite quarried where?

The exterior panels are precast concrete faced with pink granite aggregate quarried at Tarana, in the central west of New South Wales.

How many seats does the Concert Hall have?

The Concert Hall seats 2,679 people beneath the building's tallest shell and is home to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra; its walls and ceiling are lined in white birch plywood and brush box.

The Concert Hall's pipe instrument holds what world record?

Largest mechanical tracker-action organ in the world, Ronald Sharp's Grand Organ was completed in 1979 after a decade of work and has more than 10,000 pipes.

The Opera Theatre was renamed in October 2012 after which famous Australian soprano?

The renaming honoured Joan Sutherland, the coloratura soprano nicknamed 'La Stupenda', who died in October 2010; the theatre is the Sydney home of Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet.

The original architect's own 2004 tapestry in the Opera House honours which composer?

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach is the subject of the architect's tapestry Homage to C.P.E. Bach, a 14-metre work woven in Melbourne and unveiled in 2004 in the harbourside room named after the architect.

What was the projected cost of the Opera House when it was first estimated in 1957?

$7 million (3.5 million Australian pounds) was the 1957 estimate, with completion promised for Australia Day 1963; the project finished a decade late and many times over budget.

What did the Opera House ultimately cost by its completion in 1973?

$102 million was the final cost when the building opened in 1973; by October 1966, months after the architect's resignation, only $22.9 million had been spent, with the interiors yet to be built.

Which firm built the roof shells and made the 2,400 precast ribs in an on-site factory?

Hornibrook cast the ribs in a factory on the site, and its engineer Joe Bertony devised the adjustable steel erection arch that held each rib in place until a shell was complete.

Which engineering firm monitored construction and solved the structural puzzle of the shells?

Ove Arup & Partners engineered the shells; the firm's structural analysis was among the earliest to rely on computers, and its collaboration with the architect produced the spherical geometry adopted in 1961.

The 1965 election of which premier's government led to the architect's resignation a year later?

Askin had been a vocal critic of the project before taking office, and his works minister withheld the architect's fees.

Which Minister for Public Works accepted the architect's resignation in 1966?

Davis Hughes, the Country Party works minister, stopped paying the architect's fees in 1965 and accepted his letter of resignation in February 1966; the architect cited withheld payments and a lack of collaboration.

Which Australian architect took over the design role and finished the interiors after 1966?

Peter Hall led the team, with Lionel Todd and David Littlemore, that completed the interiors; he concluded the major hall could not serve both concerts and opera and made it a concert hall.

Who was the first person to perform at the Opera House, singing to construction workers at lunch in 1960?

Paul Robeson, the American bass-baritone and activist, climbed the scaffolding in 1960 and sang 'Ol' Man River' to the construction workers during their lunch break.

Which opera was the first performed in the Opera Theatre, on 28 September 1973?

Prokofiev's War and Peace opened the Opera Theatre on 28 September 1973, performed by the Australian Opera with Edward Downes conducting and Sam Wanamaker, later founder of Shakespeare's Globe, directing.

The Concert Hall's first public concert, in September 1973, was devoted to which composer?

The programme was devoted entirely to Wagner: in September 1973 Charles Mackerras conducted the Sydney Symphony, and Birgit Nilsson closed the night with Brünnhilde's Immolation Scene from Götterdämmerung.

Which architecture award did the Opera House's designer receive in 2003?

The Pritzker Prize jury's 2003 citation called the Sydney Opera House his masterpiece and one of the great iconic buildings of the 20th century.

In what year did the Sydney Opera House become a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

UNESCO inscribed the Sydney Opera House on the World Heritage List in 2007, calling it a masterpiece of 20th-century architecture; it had joined Australia's National Heritage List two years earlier.

How many times did the Opera House's architect return to see the finished building?

Never: after leaving Australia in 1966 the architect did not return, and he followed later work on the building through his son Jan, who acted as his representative in Sydney.

Which bodybuilder won his final title inside the Opera House in 1980?

Arnold Schwarzenegger took his seventh and last Mr. Olympia title at the 1980 contest staged in the Opera House's Concert Hall, a controversial win over Chris Dickerson and Frank Zane.

Which Irish rock band played a free 1978 concert on the Opera House steps?

Thin Lizzy played a free concert on the forecourt steps in October 1978, filmed for Australian television; Crowded House chose the same steps for their Farewell to the World concert in November 1996.

Which world leader addressed a crowd of 40,000 at the Opera House in 1990?

Nelson Mandela spoke from the forecourt steps to some 40,000 people in October 1990, eight months after his release from prison, during his first visit to Australia.

In 2003, two protesters painted what slogan in red on the highest sail?

No War was painted in red on the tallest sail on 18 March 2003 by Dave Burgess and Will Saunders, protesting Australia's part in the looming invasion of Iraq; both were sentenced to periodic detention.

Which musician curated the first Vivid Live programme at the Opera House in 2009?

Brian Eno curated the 2009 programme, called Luminous, and lit the sails with his own slow-changing 77 Million Paintings; that first festival grew into Vivid Sydney's annual light and music season.

A 2018 petition of over 298,000 names opposed using the sails to advertise what?

The Everest horse race barrier draw was projected onto the sails in October 2018 after Premier Gladys Berejiklian overruled Opera House chief Louise Herron; broadcaster Alan Jones had demanded Herron be sacked.

In the late 2010s, roughly how many people visited the Opera House site each year?

More than ten million people a year came to the site in the late 2010s, about 350,000 of them on guided tours and 1.4 million to attend a performance.

Which swimmer carried the Olympic torch to the top of a shell during the Sydney 2000 relay?

Samantha Riley, the breaststroke world champion, carried the flame up onto the Opera House sails on the final day of the relay, before it went on to Stadium Australia and Cathy Freeman.

Which part of the building was constructed in Stage I, from 1959 to 1963?

The podium, the massive stepped base on the point, was Stage I of construction, built by Civil & Civic from March 1959 to 1963 before work on the shells began.

Where was the roof design tested before construction?

Wind tunnels at the University of Southampton were used to test scale models of the roof, establishing wind pressures on the shells and guiding the design of the tile fixings.

Besides the Opera House, which building near Copenhagen is considered its designer's other masterpiece?

Bagsværd Church, finished in 1976 in a suburb north of Copenhagen, pairs a plain prefabricated exterior with a billowing cast-concrete ceiling; he also designed Kuwait's National Assembly and the Kingo Houses near Helsingør.

The Opera House's designer, born in Copenhagen, grew up in which Danish city, where he took an interest in ships?

Aalborg, where his father Aage worked as a naval architect at the shipyard, was his boyhood home; he drew ship hulls there before entering the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 1937.

Which Pritzker juror said the Opera House's architect 'made a building well ahead of its time'?

Frank Gehry, a member of the 2003 Pritzker jury, praised a building 'well ahead of its time, far ahead of available technology'; the architect died five years later, in 2008.

Ove Arup, the engineer behind the Opera House, was born in which English city?

Newcastle upon Tyne was his birthplace in 1895, where his Danish father worked as a veterinary surgeon and consul; the family later moved to Hamburg and then Denmark, where he trained as an engineer.

Why did New South Wales scrap plans to light the sails for King Charles's 2023 coronation?

The cost of $80,000–$100,000 per lighting was the reason Premier Chris Minns gave in May 2023, adding that the sails had been lit too often at taxpayers' expense.

What are the broad outdoor stairs rising from the forecourt to the building called?

The Monumental Steps, inspired by the platform temples the architect had seen in Mexico, lift visitors from the forecourt up to the podium, where the two main halls are entered.

In the late 2010s, roughly how many performances did the Opera House host each year?

Over 1,800 performances a year were staged across the venues in the late 2010s, drawing more than 1.4 million attendees.

How many seats are in the Joan Sutherland Theatre, home of Opera Australia?

The theatre seats 1,507 beneath the smaller group of shells; its cramped orchestra pit is a legacy of the decision, after the original architect left, to give the larger hall over to concerts.

What were the perspex 'acoustic clouds' over the Concert Hall stage meant to fix?

A lack of early sound reflections was the problem: the ceiling was so high that musicians could not hear each other, so acrylic rings were hung over the stage; they were removed in the 2020–22 renewal.

The Opera House's air-conditioning plant was designed to be cooled by what?

Harbour water drawn from beneath the building cools the plant: Danish engineers Steensen Varming designed it so that seawater absorbs heat from the refrigeration machinery before returning to the harbour.

Which artist's 1959 tapestry, commissioned by Utzon, was finally hung in the Western Foyer in 2016?

Le Corbusier designed Les Dés Sont Jetés (The Dice Are Cast) at the architect's request; it hung in the architect's family home in Denmark until the Opera House acquired it in 2015.

What did the original competition brief call for the Opera House's large hall to seat?

Acoustic adviser Lothar Cremer later warned that pushing Utzon's 2,000-seat design to 3,000 would be disastrous for the sound.

The building is run by what kind of state-government body, set up specifically for it?

A trust, the Sydney Opera House Trust, was created by a 1961 act of the New South Wales parliament and runs the building as a statutory body under the state's arts minister.

From which New South Wales town was the white birch plywood used inside the Opera House sourced?

Wauchope, a timber town near Port Macquarie on the state's mid-north coast, supplied the white birch plywood that lines the halls, alongside off-form concrete and brush box glulam.