Outstanding Opera

The Sydney Opera House, placed at Bennelong Point on Circular Quay East in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, is a full-scale performing-arts complex with five major performing spaces.

Some Interesting Facts

1. The architectural style is Expressionist Modernism – which involves innovative form and use of novel materials.

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2. It was designed by Mr Jorn Utzon, a French architect, who  had never visited the site of the Sydney Opera House before entering the design competition, but used his naval experience to study charts of the harbour

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3. The building is 185 metres long and 120 metres wide

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4. The entire site covers an area of 5.798 hectares. Eight Boeing 747s could sit wing-to-wing on the site.

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5. The building has 6,225 square metres of glass and 645 kilometres of electric cable.

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   The House hosts 3,000 events every year and has about two hundred thousand people per year take a guided tour of the building. The annual performances are attanded by about 2 million people.

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   The Concert Hall’s Grand Organ is the largest mechanical version of this instrument in the world, with 10,154 pipes. It took ten years to build.

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   It has three restaurants, a café, an espresso bar, and opera and theatre bars.

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   The first person to perform at the Sydney Opera House was Paul Robeson – in 1960, he sang Ol' Man River to the construction workers as they ate lunch. 

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    The first opera performed at the house was Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, on September 28 1973.

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