Sydney Opera House | Sydney, Australia

[Dimethyltryptamine]

The Sydney Opera House as a part Vivid Sydney


image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/a_surjanto/4655522046/
image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vividsy...29932/sizes/l/




Other picture I like (from Wikipedia)

[Antonio227]

Iconic building.

10/10

[Dimethyltryptamine]

image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2240139...91680/sizes/l/
image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7706802...12685/sizes/l/

[mossimoh]

10/10

[yudibali2008]

iconic 10/10

[dnh310]

9/10

[--]

Danes are the best architects!

[Dimethyltryptamine]

me

[Сталин]

9/10 Very iconic, and it usualy symbolises the whole country/continent of Australia.

[Srdjan Adamovic]

9/10

[Dimethyltryptamine]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/damo89/...ol-476157@N22/
image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/5817131...ol-476157@N22/
image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7534780...-16347338@N00/
image hosted on flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattjef...ol-476157@N22/

[Grejv]

10/10

[mecanico242]

9/10

[UjaiDidida]

gorgeous, iconic, still look so classy and modern
10/10

[Dakaro]

9.5

[OldBoy137]

9/10

[Gistok]

OK I'm going to rain on everyone's love affair with the Sydney Opera House...

As an architectural wonder in deserves to be a 10/10.

As a functioning opera house and symphonic hall it deserves a 4.

The acoustics are lousy.... they spent 14 times the original estimate, and took 10 years longer than
originally planned to build a functioning mediocre performance venue.

First off the larger space should have been an Opera House for 2,500... but instead it was decided to
make it symphonic (for whatever reason). So everyone sitting in the back of the hall would like to
turn up the volume... because they can't hear the musicians.

And the smaller hall which was later changed from being the symphony hall to the opera house seats
only 1,500... and guess what... the stage is too small... they can only do truck and coach smaller
opera. This venue CANNOT do Grand Opera. (Aidia... forget it...). Grand Opera has to be done
elsewhere in Sydney.

Here's an interesting article that talks about the Sydney Opera House having the worst acoustics out
of 20 major venues, the symphonic hall rated little better... 18 out of 20 in the list of major symphonic
venues...
http://www.time.com/time/world/artic...097247,00.html

I live near Detroit... and it was only top 20 major American cities that didn't have an opera house.
Build one from scratch? The city and its' patrons couldn't afford it in the 1990s. So what did they
do... they took an old abandoned Vaudeville Theatre (built in 1922), spent only $42 million on it to
restore it to its' 1922 Italian Renaissance splendor, reduced seating from 3,400 to a comfy 2,700, and
build a new stage house (3rd largest in the USA) so that any opera in the world could be staged here.
The building it's housed in is nice on the outside (like an American 1920s movie palace) but nothing
worthy of the adulation of the Sydney Opera House.

So how did Detroit do with a shoestring budget? Well Luciano Pavarotti and Dame Joan Sutherland
christened it in 1996, Andrea Bocelli had his USA Operatic premier in 1998, and the 3 Tenors sang here
extolling the wonderful acoustics. The New York Times sent an opera critic to Detroit to find out why
many of the world's great opera stars that usually only go to NYC and San Francisco... also decided to
come to Detroit over and over again... it was to hear themselves sing with the marvelous acoustics!

The Detroit architect of this wonder was a relative unknown architect named C. Howard Crane... who
designed the massive 5000+ seat Fox theatre masterpieces in Detroit, St. Louis and Brooklyn, as well
as the Warner Theatre in Washington DC (that makes the Kennedy Center sound like a fish bowl)...
(and interestingly enough Earls Court Convention Center in London where Olympic events were held.

Crane, who had studied all the theatre's and opera houses of Europe had a little secret.... if the venue
interior was pleasing to the eye, it would be pleasing to the ear as well...

From the outside... it's no match to the architecture of Paris's Garnier Opera, nor Sydney's modern
soaring wonder... but it is now America's "most Italian of all Opera Houses".

image hosted on flickr


But on the inside... it's where the magic is made... as Pavarotti said... "it's like singing inside a
Stradivarius"....

image hosted on flickr


Here's an example (granted they have microphones, but they're not opera stars, and the orchestra is
playing without amplification) 3 non-operatic 17 year olds....
http://youtu.be/b06_ffOYE4U


So before many of you wax poetically about the wonders of many of the cutting edge modern wonders
built around the world... remember this.... "cutting edge = maintenance nightmare"... and you don't
always get what you pay for.

$90 million US has already been spent on roof and interior maintenance, with a hundreds of millions
more is needed to be spent on the Sydney Opera House to make it world class or... "make it more
pleasing to the ear"....

Exterior looks alone do not a great Opera House make.....

[capricorn2000]

a perfect 10/10...simply spectacular.

[Contr]

Wow! 10/10

[Skopje/Скопје]

10/10