Like most people in Sydney, I’ve probably seen it thousands of times and been inside on several dozen occasions. But despite its familiarity, the Sydney Opera House never fails to stir awe and amazement.
Australia’s favourite “house” is turning 50 in a couple of weeks and the Herald has kicked off the celebrations with a special 40-page magazine in today’s print edition. You can also read the magazine and its various articles online here.
Could Australia summon the creative spirit and political energy required to replicate a building as brave as the Opera House?Credit: Wolter Peeters
The Herald’s Helen Pitt loves the Opera House (her book – The House: The dramatic story of the Sydney Opera House and the people who made it – is a ripper) and she was a natural choice to help spearhead our beautiful commemorative magazine. Bryan Cook also did a terrific job on the design and layout.
As Helen observes, it’s hard to imagine Sydney without its Opera House. It would be like Agra without the Taj Mahal, New York without the Empire State Building, or Paris with no Eiffel Tower.
“It is such a part of the fabric of our city, it is difficult to remember a time without the giant, white-tiled sails,” Helen writes here.
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“It’s certainly a wonder it was begun at all, let alone completed. What if the NSW Labor premier Joe Cahill hadn’t listened to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conductor Eugene Goossens on the need for a cultural centre and been convinced of its merits? What if Utzon hadn’t entered the subsequent 1956 international competition to find a design for it? What if a competition judge, Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, hadn’t retrieved Utzon’s entry from the pile of rejects and convinced his fellow judges to declare the Dane the winner? What if the women’s committee at the 1957 NSW ALP state conference had not convinced the party to endorse the Opera House proposal, or premier Cahill had not pledged to pay for it with state lotteries? What if Australian architect Peter Hall had not picked up the pieces after Utzon’s departure, completing it with the help of 10,000 workers from more than 90 countries?
“Fortunately, we will never know.”
Led by chief executive officer Louise Herron and chair Lucy Turnbull, the Sydney Opera House team has a series of great events planned to celebrate the building’s 50th birthday.
The one I’m really looking forward to is a great-debate-style discussion titled, “The Opera House Would Not Be Built Today” on Thursday. I’m fascinated by the idea of whether Australia could summon the creative spirit and political energy required to replicate a building of such bravery. The Herald’s culture editor, Osman Faruqi, will be on the team arguing it would not be built today, while Helen Pitt is on the team arguing it would. It’s going to be a great discussion.
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I have real doubts about whether we could pull off another Sydney Opera House these days. Just look at the petty criticism from some quarters of the brilliant extension to the Art Gallery of NSW, and the state government’s penny-pinching attitude towards the Powerhouse redevelopment in Ultimo. These two examples of small-mindedness don’t exactly inspire confidence that we could achieve another engineering marvel to rival the Opera House or the Harbour Bridge. I hope to be proven wrong.
Before I go, I want to mention two quick things.
First, the Herald this week published a series of truly extraordinary articles by Nick McKenzie and Michael Bachelard exploring the influence of the now-suspended Home Affairs secretary Michael Pezzullo. It was investigative journalism at its very best. If you haven’t had a read yet, I urge you to do so here.
Second, it was a thrill to see the Herald’s brilliant photojournalist Kate Geraghty and our former national security correspondent Anthony Galloway take home the 2023 Lowy Institute Media Award on Thursday night for their reporting on Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine.
ABC broadcaster Fran Kelly, a member of the judging panel, said Geraghty and Galloway used photojournalism and the written word to deliver “first-hand, powerful accounts that brought the biggest story in the world of the past two years to our homes and our hearts”.
She also offered some much-deserved acknowledgment of Kate’s very significant contribution to Australian journalism: “Kate Geraghty’s photojournalism has established her as such an important figure in our national understanding of major events.”
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