Australians on Friday celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House, which has become one of the masterpieces of world architecture of the 20th century, by illuminating the distinctive “sails” of this building on Sydney Harbor.
Fifty years after Queen Elizabeth II inaugurated the concert hall, crowds flocked to the waterfront as night fell to admire an impressive laser show that showcased the opera’s bold silhouette.
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In addition, events are organized at the opera, which is visited by about 11 million people every year, to talk about its complex history.
Its architect, the Dane Jorn Utzon, never set foot in the building he designed.
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In 1956 he won a competition against 232 other candidates. The following year he moved to Australia with his family to begin the project. But in 1966, Jorn Utzon left the site – the shell of which was almost complete – and left Australia after disagreements over the vision, budget and financing of the project.
Other architects completed the building and changed the plans for the opera house’s interior. And Jorn Utzon never returned to Australia.
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He died in Copenhagen in 2008.
A year earlier, the Sydney Opera House was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and recognized as a “masterpiece of 20th century architecture”.
A few days before the anniversary celebration, two of Utzon’s children spoke about the impact the completion of this project had on their lives.
Utzon’s daughter Lin said she was very unhappy when, as a little girl, she had to leave Australia when her father’s contract suddenly ended.
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Lin and her brother Jan, an architect, said a woman wrote a letter to her father telling him that she had given up suicide because she had been captured by the magical vision of the opera.
The letter writer had taken the ferry from Sydney Harbor with the intention of ending her life. But overwhelmed by the opera’s vision, she said to herself, “If someone could have overcome all these difficulties and created something so magical and exhilarating, who would she be to eliminate herself?” And she didn’t,” Lin said.
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This innovative building took 14 years to build and the cost, originally estimated at AU$7 million, rose to AU$102 million upon completion. It was largely funded by lotteries.
Covered with more than a million Swedish-made tiles, the interlocking arched “sails” house two event halls and a restaurant, resting on a huge concrete platform.
According to UNESCO, this “great urban sculpture” is “a daring and visionary experiment that had a lasting influence on the emerging architecture of the late 20th century.”
The opera also had funny adventures. In the 1980s, a net was placed over the orchestra pit at the Joan Sutherland Theater after a chicken left the stage and landed on a cellist during an opera performance.