So I sucked it up and decided to do the opera house tour last week. As you can tell by the picture, I have paparazzi following me around here too. It's annoying but it is the life I have chosen.
The opera house was a cool tour all-in-all...but the $30 entry fee was definitely over-priced. For that reason, I will give you the tour and all the facts and save yourself the hassle. My new camera arrived and I thought it would be fitting that the first picture I take with it be an old guy in a speedo. You can see that here.
As for the tour, Australia held an open, world-wide competition in 1960 for the design of the opera house, and the Danish architect Jorn Utzon won based solely on this loose sketch. It was originally budgeted for $7 million and 4 years, but ended up costing $102 million, which equates to $2.2 billion in today's currency, and took nearly 10 years to complete. Quite a lot of thought went into this design. The tiles on the outside structure (1 million in total) are 2 different color whites so as the sun moves throughout the day, the opera house actually appears as different colors. There are tons of stairs to get up to the main area and they did this on purpose to give it that cathedral-like feel. There are 5 theaters inside (including the main concert hall) , a couple on the outside grounds, and they do approximately 2000 shows a year. Utzon got booted off the project after he finished the major parts of the outside simply because they thought the project would move faster if Utzon reported to Australian architects. He refused to do that and flew back to Denmark, and though still alive today, he has never been back to Australia to see the completed building. The lights of the concert hall were out when I did my tour but here's a picture of the inside.
Everything including the seats is wood so the acoustics are truly amazing although the inside does not have that 'wow' factor like the Royal Albert Hall in London has. Anyway, they never use microphones for any shows (except for rock singers). Notice the clear 'acoustic discs' hanging from the ceiling...those lower a bit and actually are used to bounce the sound back down to the musicians so they can hear the other instruments as they are playing. This organ is also the largest in the world. There are 136 viewable pipes, but there are 10,000 in total...the wall where the pipes are go back 30 yards were the rest are. It has 5 keyboards as well. I was like..."is that many pipes really necessary?" Especially since it took several years just to tune it.
So these 'tour guide' videos are kind of poopy and the jokes are lame, especially the worst Ali G impression of all time. I am still learning this new camera so sorry for the bad angles but enjoy.
There are no supportive beams in the opera house construction. Everything is held together with support wires as this picture kind of shows.
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