Sydney Opera House

Sydney Opera House (photo courtesy of SOH website). 

I am living in Sydney now so I took advantage of the opportunity to go on a tour of the Sydney Opera House, a highly discussed, photographed and visited building.  Indeed Australia’s most iconic building.  Accompanied by my friend, Venetia, we cued to buy tour tickets and were pleasantly surprised to find out that presenting our tour tickets when purchasing performance tickets we would receive a discount.  Unfortunately neither of us took advantage of this, although it is worth noting for when fellow New Zealanders cross the ditch to visit us.  

We were provided with head phones for the duration of the tour.  I found this to be really beneficial.  I didn't have to always be looking at the guide to hear what she was saying and it meant I could roam a little while she talked. 

Our guide pointed out that there have only been to alterations to the Opera House since its completion.  The first alteration was the refurbishment of an interior space to become the Ultzon room.   Jorn Ultzon is the architect who designed the Sydney Opera house.  Apparently the Ultzon room is updated and very classy; it was closed at the time of our tour, so I didn't get to see it.  The second was the installation of deep set windows on the lower level where the Playhouse theatres are located on the Circular Quay side of the building.  These I thought were done tastefully in keeping with the buildings style. 

Most impressive is the bright purple carpet in the gathering area outside the concert hall overlooking the harbour.  This area is now commonly known as ‘The Carpet Room’. 

The bright purple carpet

The tour is sometimes limited to which rooms they can show us due to performances and rehearsals.  We were allowed to go into the concert hall while the organist was practising.  The pipe organ is huge.  Over three hundred pipes are visible at the front and there are over a thousand behind that are hidden.  We were also permitted to sit in the opera hall while crew were setting up a stage for an evening ballet performance.

Concert hall pipe organ

There were several little things that I learnt on the tour.  The glass in the windows overlooking the water are not vertical, they are heavily leaning out, away from the view so you can see much of what is below.  But the reason for this is so the view of the city at night can been seen, rather than a big fat reflection of yourself in the glass.  Also the Sydney Opera House never has to be cleaned as the exterior tiles are self cleaning.  Apparently there are several different types of tiles that form the exterior cladding and this is why the Opera House very seldom looks the same as it did yesterday.  The tiles reflect light so its appearance changes with the weather and lighting around it.  

There is so much that I could prattle on about in regards to the Sydney Opera house, from its designer and his influences, the turmoil that ensued during construction over time delays and budget to the construction methods.  But all that stuff is pretty widely known already and if you want to read about it you can go to the Sydney Opera House website, it’s very comprehensive.

What I took away from my tour of the Sydney Opera House was an appreciation of a grand building.  I look forward to going to an orchestral concert sometime in the near future and letting that feeling of being somewhere special and significant sink into me.