Origins
The idea of building an opera house in Sydney began to take shape in the late 1940s when Eugene Goossens, director of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in the state of New South Wales, argued that the city needed a convenient venue for large theater productions.
At that time, theatrical productions took place in the Sydney Town Hall building, a space considered insufficient for this type of productions. In 1954, Goossens had great success in gaining the support of the state's premier, Joseph Cahill), who requested designs for the construction of a new building dedicated expressly to house the opera house.
Goossens also insisted that the building be built on the peninsula of Bennelong Point, on Sydney Harbor, against the opinion of Prime Minister Cahill, who believed that it was better to install it near the Wynyard railway station, in the northwest of the city, thus facilitating its access. Bennelong is a small peninsula named in honor of an Aboriginal man named Bennelong (1764-1813) who acted as an intermediary between the Aboriginal settlement and the Commander of the Fleet and first Governor of New Wales, Arthur Philip").[4].
The competition began on September 13, 1955 and received a total of 233 projects from 32 different countries in search of a prize consisting of 100,000 dollars. orchestras, choirs, conferences, meetings, performances of different types.[6].
The winning design was announced in 1957, with the project by Jørn Utzon, a Danish architect, winning. Eero Saarinen, an American architect and designer of Finnish origin, who was a member of the jury of the Sydney Opera House Commission, was crucial in the selection of Jørn Utzon's design. Utzon arrived in Sydney in 1957 to help supervise the project and construction of the building.[7].
Design and construction
On the land chosen for the construction of the complex was the old Fort Macquarie, then converted into a tram depot, which had to be demolished in 1958. The following year construction formally began. The project was executed in three stages.
The first phase of work began on December 5, 1958, by the Sydney-based construction company Lend Lease Corporation. The government decided to start work immediately, fearing that funding, or public opinion, could reverse and delay or even cancel the work. But that decision was met with the problem that the most important structural designs were still not done (most notably the sails, which were still parabolic at the time). By January 23, By 1961, only 47 weeks of work had been spent, this delay in the work was mainly due to unexpected difficulties (inclement weather, construction starting before the proper construction drawings had been prepared, changes to the original contract documents). Finally, on August 31, 1962, the podium was completed.
The premature and forced start of the work led to very significant final problems, the largest of which was the construction of the podium columns that were to support the roof, with a resistance lower than that necessary to support the projected roof structure. This error led to the cover having to be redefined, so its design suffered a variation with respect to the original design.[8].
The lightened vault-shaped structure was initially geometrically undefined,[9] but almost from the beginning of the building design process, the vaults were projected as a series of parabolas supported by a prefabricated structure of ribs. This approach was opposed by the English firm Ove Arup and partners, whose engineers could not find an acceptable solution to build them.
They had to find a way to economically build the vaults in a prefabricated way, because using "in-situ" formwork would have entailed an inordinate cost. Repeating this technique on the rooftop would also have been too costly.
From 1957 to 1963, the design team considered at least twelve different interactions in the shape of the vaults (schemes including "Parabola (mathematical)" parabolas, circular ribs and ellipsoids) before finding a workable solution.
The design work on the shells involved one of the earliest applications of computers in structural analysis to understand the complex system of forces that the vaults would receive.[10] In mid-1961 the design team found a solution to the problem: all the vaults are created as sections of a sphere.
There is great controversy over who to attribute this original solution to. It was initially attributed to Utzon. A letter from Ove Arup to Ashworth, a member of the executive committee of the Sydney Opera House, reads:
Peter Jones, author of Ove Arup's biography, indicates that «...the architect and his supporters also said they remember the precise eureka moment...; The engineers and some of their associates, with equal conviction, remember the discussion both in central London and at Ove's house. Jones concludes that "existing evidence shows that Arup examined various possibilities for the geometry of shells, from parabolas to ellipsoids and spheres."[11] For his part, Yuzo Mikami, a member of the design team, presented a completely opposite view in his project book titled Utzon's Sphere.[12][13].
It is unlikely that the definitive truth will ever be known, but there is a clear consensus that the work done by the design team is of a high quality. In fact, for the first part of the project, both Utzon, Arup and Ronald Jenkins (Ove Arup partner) played a significant role in the development of the project.[14].
As Peter Murray stated in The Saga of the Sydney Opera House:.
In this way, the spherical shape was finally used in the final design. The sphere, being the simplest three-dimensional curved surface, opened a wide range of possibilities in design, and thus became the simplest and easiest to control geometric shape. In a sphere the degree of curvature is the same at all points on it.
The vaults were built by Hornibrook Group Pty Ltd), who were also responsible for stage three construction. Hornibrook manufactured the 2,400 prefabricated ribs and 4,000 roof panels in a factory on the same site, and also developed the construction processes.[8].
This technique avoided the need to construct expensive formwork, resorting to the use of prefabricated units (it also allowed the roof tiles to be prefabricated in sheets at ground level, rather than being glued individually on the vault at height). Engineers from Ove Arup & Asociados personally supervised the construction and placement of the vault pieces, in which an innovative steel fastening system, called construction arch, was used to support the various roofs before completion. Thus, a fan system was used for the shape of the beam structure. The beams started from a point opening like a fan, their layout being that of the meridians of the sphere, making the line that defines them have the same radius for all the beams: 460 feet.[15].
With on-site manufacturing, construction was considerably simplified, especially because the shells are fragments of the same sphere with a radius of about 75 meters (246 feet). By working with a sphere, not only the construction was simplified, but also the calculations.
On April 6, 1962, it was estimated that the Opera building could be completed between August 1964 and March 1965. However, the estimated time was exceeded and by the end of 1965, it was estimated that the second phase would only be completed in 1967.[3].
In 1965 there was a change of government in the state of New Wales, with Robert Askin taking over. The new government changed the teams in charge of the project, transferring it to the Ministry of Public Works. This ultimately led to Utzon's resignation in 1965 (see below).
The third stage of construction was intended for the interiors. It began in February 1963, when Utzon moved his entire office to Sydney. In 1965 Utzon was dismissed and his position was taken over mainly by Peter Hall who took control of the works, and became largely responsible for the interior design. Other people appointed that year to replace Utzon were E.H. Farmer as architect of government, D.S. Littlemore and Lionel Todd.
Up to that point (October 1965) the project had spent only $22.9 million, less than a quarter of the final cost. However, the projected costs for the design at this stage were much more significant.[3].
In 1966 the acoustic advisor, Lothar Cremer"), confirmed to SOHEC that Utzon's original acoustic design allowed only 2,000 seats in the main hall and indicated that increasing the number of seats to 3,000 as specified in the design would be disastrous for the acoustics of the venue.
According to Peter Jones, the stage designer, Martin Carr, criticized the "configuration, height and width of the stage, the physical facilities for the artists, the location of the dressing rooms, the widths of doors and their elevations, and the location of the lighting board."[16]
The four most significant changes to the design after Utzon's departure from the project were:
The Opera House was formally completed in 1973, at a cost of $102 million. Sam Hoare, the Hornibrook director in charge of the project, gave the approximate costs for each project in 1973:
The original cost estimate in 1957 was £3,500,000 ($7 million) with the original completion date set by the government as January 26, 1963.[18]
Utzon and his resignation
Prior to the international competition to design the Opera House, Utzon had won seven of the eighteen competitions in which he had entered, but had never seen any of his designs built.[19] Utzon's concept for the Sydney Opera House is almost universally regarded as a unique design. The advisors' report in January 1957 indicated:
For the first stage of the project Utzon successfully worked closely with the rest of the design team and the client, but as the project progressed, it became clear to him (with revised use of the rooms at the clients' request) that the tender requirements had been inadequate in terms of acoustics, specifications of the operating spaces and other areas, and that the client had not appreciated the costs or work involved in the design and construction. Relations between the client and the design team became more complicated when the order was given to start construction prematurely, at the request of the state developers, even though the design was still incomplete.
The relationship between the client, the architect, the engineers and the contractors became a point of increasing tension, between Utzon and the clients, and also between Utzon and Arups. Utzon believed that clients should receive all information about all aspects of design and construction through him, while clients wanted a system (drawn in sketch form by Davis Hughes) where architect, contractors, and engineers each showed the client the work directly. This difference had major implications for methods of procurement and cost control, with Utzon wanting to negotiate contracts with chosen suppliers (such as Ralph Symonds for the interiors of the veneered) and the Australian government that insisted that contracts be put up for public bidding.[8].
However, the reasons why Arups needed to contact customers directly were equally clear. Peter Murray explains that:.
Utzon was very reluctant to respond to questions or criticism from his client, the "Sydney Opera House Executive Committee" (SOHEC).[20] Despite this, he was permanently supported by Professor Harry Ingham Ashworth), a member of the committee and one of the original judges of the competition. However, the relationship was not facilitated by the stance of Utzon, who was unwilling to subordinate his designs, in some respects, to the clients' desires for change. As he put it, commented to Jack Zunz, a member of the design team, in 1961:
Utzon consistently maintained that he had solved all the problems in his head, but was reluctant to produce drawings or documentation to demonstrate the cost or vision of his subsequent design. Peter Murray stated:
During the initial concept and early design stages this was not a problem, but later in the process considerable tensions began between the parties. Utzon's ability was never in doubt and Ove Arup in fact indicated that Utzon was:.
Over the following years the relationship worsened, with Utzon refusing access to the drawings and documents to the representative of the ministry of public works.
Opening
The Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II,[31] in her capacity as Queen of Australia on October 20, 1973 together with the Duke of Edinburgh in the presence of thousands of people. The opening ceremony included fireworks and a performance of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 "Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)". The opening evening included the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Willem van Otterloo, the Sydney Philarmonia Choir and the Sydney Philarmonia Motet Choor, performing "Jubugalee" (by John Antil). The following day, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh made a formal visit to the facilities and the entire complex.
Before the official opening ceremony, several dramatic and musical performances had already been performed in the building.
During the construction of the building, numerous lunchtime performances were given, the first being that of the African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson, performed in 1960 from the scaffolding for the workers constructing the building. Lauris Elms") and Donald Westlake. On December 17 of that same year the first trial concert was held at the Concert Hall, with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Bernard Heinze"). On January 21, 1973, the first test concert was held at the Opera House, with performances by Donald Smith, Elizabeth Fretwell, and members of the ABC National Training Orchestra, directed by Robert Miller. On April 10, 1973, the first recital was held at the complex, before an audience of guests, by pianist Rómola Constantino, who performed the performance in the Concert Hall. Concerts).[33].
The first public performance took place on September 28, 1973, with the presentation of the opera War and Peace "War and Peace (opera)") by Sergei Prokofiev at the Opera House. The following day, on September 29, the first public concert was held in the Concert Hall, performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Charles Mackerras and the Swedish soprano Birgit Nilsson, as soloist.[33].