Symbol of the city
The Sydney Opera House has been a symbol of the city of Sydney since it first opened on October 20th, 1973. The multi-venue performing arts center was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jorn Utzon who won the Pritzker Prize, architecture’s highest honour, in 2003 for his work. The Sydney Opera House was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site on 28 June 2007. It is one of the 20th century’s most distinctive buildings and one of the most famous performing arts centers in the world.The Sydney Opera House is situated on Bennelong Point in Sydney Harbor, close to the Sydney Harbor Bridge. It sits at the northeastern tip of the Sydney Central Business District (the CBD), surrounded on three sides by the harbour, Sydney Cove and Farm Cove, and neighboured by the Royal Botanic Gardens.
The performing arts centre is one of the busiest in the world, hosting over 1,500 performances a year with an attendence of over 1 million people. The four key resident companies that perform at the centre include Opera Australia, The Australian Ballet, The Sydney Theatre Company, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
The Sydney Opera House is a modern expressionist design, with a series of large precast concrete “shells”, each composed of sections of a sphere of 75.2 metre (246 ft 8½ in) radius, forming the roofs of the structure, set on a monumental podium. The building covers 1.8 hectares (4.5 acres) of land and is 183 metres (605 ft) long and 120 metres (388 ft) wide at its widest point. It is supported on 588 concrete piers sunk as much as 25 metres below sea level.
Coming up this year at the Sydney Opera House is La Boheme, Of Mice and Men , Macbeth, Don Giovanni, and much more!
