Australia celebrates 50 years of the Sydney Opera House

On October 20, Australians are celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Sydney Opera House, which has become one of the masterpieces of world architecture of the 20th century. In the evening, a laser show will illuminate the “sails” of the building located in Sydney Harbour. Fifty years ago, Queen Elizabeth II opened the concert hall, which has since been visited by some 11 million people per year. But the Opera had a complex genesis. Its architect, the Dane Jorn Utzon, never set foot in the building he designed. In 1956, he won a competition after beating 232 other candidates. The following year, he moved to Australia with his family to embark on the project. But in 1966, Jorn Utzon left the building site - whose shells were almost complete - and abandoned Australia after disagreements with the state's minister of public works over the vision, budget and financing of the project.

Other architects completed the building, drastically changing its plans for the opera house interior. And Jorn Utzon never returned to Australia. The original architect of the now iconic building died in Copenhagen in 2008. A year earlier, the Sydney Opera House was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, hailing it as a “masterpiece of 20th century architecture.” ". Construction of this innovative building took 14 years and its cost, initially estimated at AU$7 million, rose to AU$102 million upon completion. It was largely financed by state lotteries. The interlocking vaulted “sails”, covered with more than a million Swedish-made tiles, house two performance halls and a restaurant, resting on a vast concrete platform. This “great urban sculpture”, is according to UNESCO, “a daring and visionary experiment which had a lasting influence on the emerging architecture of the end of the 20th century”. The Opera has also experienced funny adventures. In the 1980s, a net was installed over the orchestra pit at the Joan Sutherland Theater after a chicken performing in an opera performance left the stage and landed on a cellist.