![]() The Canberra Times reported the British media believed the Opera House was a sign that “the country had turned a corner artistically”. ![]() In spite of this, there was still cultural cringe. Gough Whitlam declared it was “a magnificent building, Our civilisations are known by their buildings and future generations will honour the people of this generation by this building.” ![]() Some fitted the Opera House into older narratives of Britishness: in his book Sydney Builds an Opera House, Oswald Zeigler remarked we needed to thank Captain Arthur Phillip “for finding the site for this symbol of the Australian cultural revolution”. AdvertisementĪs historians Richard White and Sylvia Lawson note, while the Opera House was intended for all performing arts, the centrality of opera – with its expense and small audiences – made a symbolic statement a “new, more sophisticated Australia” had arrived.Īs Australia sought to find an identity independent of Britain, the Opera House became a symbol of this new nationalist turn. The Queen tactfully acknowledged the building’s construction delays in her speech at the opening ceremony, suggesting “every great imaginative venture has had to be tempered by the fire of controversy”. In spite of the jokes and doubts, by the time the building was finished, Australians had embraced the Opera House as their own. Utzon famously resigned from the project in 1966 Australian architect Peter Hall oversaw the construction of the interior. Danish architect Jørn Utzon’s bold, avant garde design won the competition and construction began in 1961, funded – in a democratic touch – by the NSW government’s Opera House lottery.Ĭonstruction was plagued by difficulties and expanding costs. This part of the story is well-known (indeed, there was even an opera). He found a sympathetic ear in Joe Cahill, the Labor premier who committed Bennelong Point to the project and launched an international competition to design the building in 1955. The campaign for an Opera House in Sydney was initiated by Sir Eugene Goosens, who came to Australia as conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra in 1947. But what did the Opera House mean to Australians when it opened 50 years ago? Today, the Sydney Opera House reminds us Australia can value culture for its own sake. This was a hallmark of the “new nationalism” in the 1970s: the arts were regarded as essential to Australia’s newly confident sense of national identity. The building itself symbolised a new era of state investment in cultural infrastructure. The opening festivities gestured both to Australia’s deep Indigenous roots and white imperial origins. In her speech, the Queen remarked the Opera House had “captured the imagination of the world”. More than 2,000 small boats viewed the ceremony from the water.Īfter the national anthem was played and nine F111 aircraft roared overhead, the crowd heard a didgeridoo and Aboriginal actor Ben Blakeney delivered a prologue “representing the spirit of Bennelong”. ![]() Spectators carrying flasks of coffee and cushions watched from the sidelines. Fifty years ago today, after a prolonged and controversial period of construction, the Sydney Opera House was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II in a lavish ceremony.
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