The Sydney Opera House: its Cultural Significance

The Sydney Opera House: its Cultural Significance

The Sydney Opera House is not only of outstanding universal value for its achievements in structural engineering and building technology but also it has got enormous cultural significance. The building is a great artistic monument and an icon, accessible to society at large. It is a daring and visionary experiment that has had an enduring influence on the emergent architecture of the late 20^th century. Utzon's original design concept and his unique approach to building gave an impulse to a collective creativity of architects, engineers and builders.

The Sydney Opera House plays the function as a world-class performing arts centre. The Conservation Plan specifies the need to balance the roles of the building as an architectural monument and as a state of the art performing centre, thus retaining its authenticity of use and function [9].

The Sydney Opera House was included in the National Heritage List in 2005 under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and on the State Heritage Register of New South Wales in 2003 under the Heritage Act 1977 [10]. Listing in the National Heritage List implies that the World Heritage property may have a significant impact on the heritage values.

Only a handful of buildings around the world are as architecturally and culturally significant as the Sydney Opera House. But what sets it apart from, say, the Taj Mahal and the great pyramids of Egypt is that this white-sailed construction caught mid billow over the waters of Sydney Cove is a working building.

Most visitors are surprised to learn it's not just an opera house but a full-scale performing-arts complex with five major performance spaces.

The biggest and grandest is the 2,690-seat Concert Hall, which has the best acoustics of any building of its type in the world. Come here to experience opera, chamber music, symphonies, dance, choral performances, and even rock 'n' roll. The Opera Theatre is smaller, seating 1,547, and books operas, ballets, and dance. The Drama Theatre, seating 544, and the Playhouse, seating 398, specialize in plays and smaller-scale performances. The Boardwalk, seating 300, is used for dance and experimental music [4; p. 42].

Guided tours of the Opera House last about an hour and are conducted daily from 9am to 5pm, except on Good Friday and December 25. Though guides try to take groups into the main theaters and around the foyers, if you don't get to see everything you want, it's because the Opera House is a working venue.

There's almost always some performance, practice, or setting up to be done. Reservations are essential. Tour sizes are limited, so be prepared to wait. Tours include about 200 stairs.

Thus, the Sydney Opera House has got enormous cultural significance. It was designed to boast not only structural engineering and building technology but it was implied for different uses, including full-scale operas, chamber music, symphonies, dance, choral performances, and even rock 'n' roll, mass meetings, lectures, ballet performances and other presentations.