The Sydney Opera House: Its History and its People

The best loved building in Australia nearly didn’t get off the drawing board. When it did, the lives of everyone involved in its construction were utterly changed: some for the better, many for the worse. Sydney Morning Herald journalist Helen Pitt is also the author The House: The dramatic story of the Sydney Opera House and the people who made it. In her book, Helen Pitt has brought to life the people behind the magnificent white sails of the Sydney Opera House. On Wednesday 15 August 2018, Helen Pitt addressed The Sydney Institute to reflect on the tragedies that lay behind the construction of this iconic building.

THE SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE: ITS HISTORY & ITS PEOPLE

HELEN PITT

I was driving across San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge listening to the BBC World Service on the car radio when I heard that Danish architect Jørn Utzon had died. It was 29 November 2008. Like many Sydneysiders the world over I imagine, I felt an instant stab in my heart. Those of us born in “Generation Jørn” all knew the great gift he gave our city: the Sydney Opera House.

“One of the indisputable masterpieces of human creativity, not only in the twentieth century but in the history of humankind,” as UNESCO described it in 2007 when it joined the World Heritage list. I’d lived in San Francisco nearly a decade at that point, but was overcome with a wave of nostalgia for the city of my birth. As I drove north across the iconic Golden Gate Bridge that day I glanced to the right, almost expecting to see the internationally-known white icon of Australia. You know that feeling you get when you drive or catch a train or bus north across the Sydney Harbour Bridge and catch yourself distracted by the magnificent white sails of the Opera House. Instead of the San Francisco bay, I saw this.

Sydney Harbour, 20 October 20 1973. I was an eight-year-old girl on the windy spring day Queen Elizabeth II, opened our nation’s most famous building.

 I was with my family on a specially chartered ferry, perched in a prime position to catch a glimpse of the newly completed Sydney Opera House.

We were typical Sydneysiders: eager to see the opening of our city’s much-talked-about building. There were roughly a million of us according to police estimates, crowding the harbour, foreshores and city streets. Many millions more watched it on TV at home. Police sharpshooters lined the skyscrapers around the site during the ceremony in the country’s biggest security operation ever, only a year after terrorists had shattered the peace of the 1972 Munich Olympics. It was part of the most elaborate festivities in the nation’s European history.

I remember admiring the giant red/pink ribbons hanging from the opera house shells as they billowed in the blustery wind. The white tiles of the sails glistened, slinky and smooth like the skin of a reptile sunning itself beneath a brilliant blue sky.

 The Aboriginal actor Ben Blakeley atop the big white shell proclaiming: “I am Bennelong, and the spirit of my people lives.” Decades after the ribbons were cut and the balloons and pigeons were let loose, his words had a resonance I little understood as an eight-year-old. Listening to his obituary on the radio on the day Utzon died, in far off San Francisco I was struck by the tragedy of his story.

In my more than 30 years as a journalist – both in Sydney and abroad – I’ve often wondered if the media should be blamed for the downfall and poor treatment of Utzon. So a bit like an archaeologist, I went on a dig to the past to find out. In doing so I found there were many more tragedies than just Utzon’s behind the triumphant white sails on Bennelong Point.

So let me take you back to Sydney 1954, 3 February to be precise. More than a million Sydneysiders lined the harbour from before dawn to watch the steamship Gothic, carrying Queen Elizabeth II, glide through the Heads. More than half the city’s 1.8 million population, came to see the first reigning monarch step ashore in what was the biggest event to happen in Australia at that point. Here she is in Martin Place where she went to lay a wreath at the cenotauph. Sydney was awash with Union Jacks; all over the city streets were plywood banners bent in the shape of boomerangs containing crowns atop. They were made by Ralph Symonds whose plywood palace on the Parramatta River was renowned at the time for producing the world’s longest plywood rolls – some up to 15 metres in length.

Symonds is one of the many tragic figures in the Opera House story.

In the same year as the Queen’s visit, in November, when Sydney was awash in a sea of jacarandas, the first meeting took place to discuss the idea of establishing a cultural institution along the lines of an Opera House. The meeting was held in the lecture room of the Sydney public library in the Queen Victoria Building.

Nugget Coombs spoke on behalf of the Elizabethan Theatre Trust, which he had convinced the Menzies Government to create in the wake of the royal visit. “I am certain,” he told Premier Joe Cahill who had called the meeting, “that if you succeed your name will live for the next 400 years as the head of government who put the opera house there.” Instead his name lives on in the Cahill Expressway that visually garrottes Circular Quay.

Bennelong Point, which at the point was the turnaround point for the city’s trams was the widely touted most likely location.

The meeting was the culmination of seven years of tireless campaigning on the part of Sydney Symphony conductor Eugene Goossens, who was the mastermind of the Sydney Opera House. He had been lobbying his boss, Charles Moses, the general manager of the ABC which administered the nation’s six state run symphonies, on the need for a better building than the Sydney Town Hall for his orchestra to perform in. He had vowed to make his fledgling Sydney symphony members “as famous as Australia’s cricket stars.” Instead, what happened is Goossens became infamous when he became embroiled in Australia’s most dramatic pornographic scandal in 1956: that involved sex, black magic, Rosaleen Norton, known as the witch of Kings Cross, and a dramatically swift departure from Australia, never to return again. I call it the “Fifty shades of Eugene” chapter and it’s probably best read in the privacy of your own home than detailed here. He was the first casualty of the Opera House saga.

Before he left, the conductor, who was also a steam train and cruise liner enthusiast, asked artists Bill Constable to sketch a preliminary idea for a building at Bennelong Point that could house a symphony. He had been living in America before being offered the job as Symphony conductor and head of the Conservatorium – on a salary that was more than the Prime Minister Ben Chifley was earning at the time. His idea for an Opera House included rounded P & O windows and an outdoor amphitheatre/classical music performance space along the lines of the Hollywood Bowl.

 Instead the Cahill government announced an international design competition offering £5000 prize money. Then he appointed a four-judge panel to choose a winner.
Finnish born American architect Eero Saarinen, who had been on the cover of Time magazine in 1956 the year the judges were appointed, is the man alleged to have been the one who chose Utzon’s designs from the pile of rejects at the NSW Art Gallery. He was the son of Finland’s most famous architect, Eliel Saarinen, who got second place to Walter Burley Griffin in the design competition for Canberra. He grew up beneath the rounded domes and cupolas of his family’s Helsinki villa and was a fan of this form in his architecture.

He was working on the design for the TWA Flight Centre at Idlewild now known as New York’s JFK airport, when he was asked to be one of the judges for the Sydney Opera House design competition. He had met Jorn Utzon when Utzon was on a study tour to the United States. On his way to study Mayan temples in Mexico – which later formed the inspiration for the podium for his masterpiece – Utzon visited him in Michigan. The two Scandinavians were friends. Saarinen, who arrived four days late for the judging, retrieved entrant 218 from a pile of rejects.

. Initially the winning design included goldleaf under the white curves of the building that become synonymous with Bennelong Point.

The judges chose a relatively unknown 38-year-old Danish architect. “Yawn Ootzon” was how Premier Joe Cahill explained his name should be pronounced at the unveiling of the winner. At that point, his proudest accomplishment had been the design of his own house in Hellebeck, just north of Helsingor which is famous for Kronbourg castle, the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Utzon built the yellow brick south facing home without any plans other than paying attention to the laws of nature. It has an inner Chinese style courtyard and ceiling to floor windows to let nature inside.

The judges said his drawings were simple to the point of being diagrammatic. So one judge – Sydney University’s Harry Ingham Ashworth – commissioned his fellow university professor to render it in watercolour which he hoped might help the public and the press be more convinced by its impressive design. Over time, engineering issues forced its shape to be changed. The runners up came from America and England – one included a helicopter landing space on the roof. Another entrant, from the Sydney Morning Herald illustrator and architect George Molnar, was in the shape of a Manly ferry.

It took several months – from January to July 1957 – for Premier Cahill to convince his caucus of the benefits of the design. Many, including the ABC boss Charles Moses, thought there was no way Cahill’s Labor colleagues would pay for such a bold building. A motion to scuttle it was avoided when Cahill decided to take the proposal to the ALP state conference at the Town Hall. An immigrant called Miss N Napper, from the Clothing Trades union was the woman who convinced the “blokey boys” from the ALP that an opera house was more than just something for “hoity toity people” as they called it. She got a standing ovation when she told them her small homeland island of Malta had the world’s third biggest Opera House. Her motion was successful. The Opera House would be built.

Utzon came to Sydney for the first time in July 1957 with his then business partner Swede Eric Andersson. They showed Sydney Lord Mayor, Harry Jenson (known alternatively as Headline Harry and Handsome Harry) the model they brought with them of the design for the Sydney Opera House. It was to launch the public campaign to fund the building and the notorious “kissing party” fundraiser another racy chapter in the building’s story.

The Opera House Executive committee was formed, headed by “Silent” Stan Haviland. Premier Joe Cahill kicked off the building in a ceremony in March 1959 at Bennelong Point. Cahill called the building his “baby” while everyone else called it “the Taj Cahill”. As he lent down to kiss the plaque made in the Danish shipyard which Utzon and his wife Lis brought from Denmark, the police band struck up the My Fair Lady hit “With a Little bit of Luck” and the pneumatic drills began in the background. Civil and Civic, run by Dick Dusseldorp of Lend Lease fame, was responsible for stage one of the building – the podium. Within six months, Cahill would die of a heart attack. The second public figure to disappear tragically for the project.

The first Sydney Opera House lottery was drawn in January 1958. It would pay for the building – making it Australia’s first crowd funded building. All told, 469 lotteries raised the bulk of funds for the total cost of the building $102 million. It would set the scene for the perhaps the best known tragedy associated with the building: the Graeme Thorne kidnap and murder. In 1960, Bondi’s Bazil Thorne’s smiling face brandished the afternoon tabloids after winning the Opera House lottery. His son was kidnapped and killed on his way to his school Scot’s College. It was the first kidnap and ransom case Australia had ever encountered. It was also the first time forensic medicine was used to track a killer – when scientists used DNA testing to match the dog hair found on the Onkaparinga blanket that Graeme’s body was buried in at Clontarf. Thereafter “not for publication” was an item to tick on every Opera House lottery ticket.

The 30-member Opera House committee was appointed as the client to architect Jorn Utzon. In hindsight, this committee as client was probably one of the biggest mistakes in the whole building process. Utzon worked closely with them from the beginning but you can imagine “design by committee” was cumbersome. Which may explain why costs got out of control quickly. They usually bowed to Utzon’s ideas – they got on well. But, as the Government Architect Ted Farmer said many years later, it probably would have been better if architects had been put in charge rather than a hotch potch of Sydneysiders.

Utzon’s father was one of Scandinavia’s best known boat builders. He was a naval architect in the northern Danish city of Aalborg, who designed “the Aalborg dinghy”, which became internationally renowned in sea scouting circles. Utzon used many of the methods of boat and ship construction for the building of The House. Workers using Ralph Symonds’ plywood constructed the wooden moulds for the more than 2000 concrete segments that make up the building. They were glued together with an epoxy resin – a sort of superglue – the consistency of condensed milk. It was the first time such a technique was used to build something of this scale anywhere in the world. The interior of the main hall looked a little like an upended Viking boat. Over 10,000 workers from 90 different countries took part in the construction of this building. I interviewed quite a few of them because I had a sense time was running out to talk to them.

The crucial component to help construct the shells was the movable erection arch – a bridge building technique devised by the stage two builders – Queensland construction firm Hornibrooks. It was designed by Joe Bertony, a French spy who escaped two concentration camps and was given an award for valour from French President Charles de Gaulle for his wartime activities. He’s still alive at 96 and living in Sydney’s Hornsby today.

NSW Premier Bob Heffron took over after Cahill’s death. Ralph Symonds’ plywood factory was at Mortdale – now known as Breakfast Point near the Olympic stadium at Homebush. Symonds, a maverick entrepreneur who zoomed around his plywood plant in a dodgem style device, went to visit Utzon in Denmark not long after his Opera House win to sell his product to the Dane. Utzon was impressed. As he preferred the European craft method of working with experts – rather than the Anglo Saxon tender process where the cheapest bidder got the job – he intended to work extensively with Symonds throughout the whole design process of the house. This was until the next tragedy when Ralph Symond’s lifeless body was found floating facedown in Pittwater after a boating accident in 1960. Utzon continued to work with Symond’s company despite it going into receivership, just as he worked with the Hoganas team in Sweden who created the more than one million tiles that were shipped to Australia and became known as the Sydney tile. Fortunately, Hoganas’ bid for the job came in as the cheapest as he’d already begun working with them when the job went to tender.

Ralph Symonds’ factory on the banks of the Parramatta River was built with plywood and has recently been used as a government storage shed for Westconnex. Much like the light rail today, the building of the Opera House, although enshrined in ALP policy, became a political hot potato. The Askin Government won the 1965 election by a slim majority of two seats – largely because the Opera House was taking so long and costing so much. And country people were unhappy. To appease them, William Davis Hughes was appointed as Public Works Minister. Hughes kneecapped the executive committee and put himself in charge of the work and costs. Essentially, he became Utzon’s paymaster. A falling out between Utzon and Ove Arup – the Danish/British engineer in charge – was the result of a dispute over the use of plywood mullions which were the joints in the huge glass windows. Hughes stopped paying Utzon until he submitted plans and a completion date.

Utzon had wanted to use Ralph Symonds’ plywood to build what he called a “sisu” roof – a Finnish word that means to pull out of yourself something you didn’t think possible. He set up his loyal lieutenant, fellow Dane Mogens Prip Buus, in an office in Symonds’ western Sydney factory to work on it. It resembled the interior of a Bedouin tent that he’d slept under on a five-week journey to Morocca in the 1940s. The plan was for the plywood parts to be assembled at the Symonds factory and floated down the Parramatta River on barges as a way to involve the people of Sydney in the project. It was meant to be a sort of conflation of Aida, the opera set on the banks of the Nile about the building of the Cairo opera house and Handel’s Water music, performed on the banks of the Thames for King George I. Richard Walsh, my publisher at Allen & Unwin, calls this my opera and Lucinda chapter. All plans for the plywood procession were halted by the events in the Chief Secretary’s building on 28 February 1966.

Utzon went to Davis Hughes’ office. There had been a stand off over payments owed to him and the plywood mock-ups he wanted to make at Symonds’ factory. Utzon said he was forced to leave by Hughes. The Herald reported that Utzon had “resigned angrily in an interview”. The details – outlined in my book – are one of the most dramatic chapters and lead up to the departure of the Dane on 28 April 1966. The day after, Ove Arup arrived in Sydney from London for emergency talks. Utzon left without meeting his friend with whom he had a spectacular falling out. Another tragedy. The two only met once by accident again – they never talked. My book includes previously unpublished letters between Arup and Utzon, which I found in the Utzon archive among his personal papers from my two trips to Denmark. Arup’s family say the Sydney Opera House story is a sadness that stayed with him until his death at 90.

Utzon said he had the building in his head like a composer has a symphony. Which was the problem for anyone taking over the project. Utzon’s legal team, which included a young barrister by the name of Neville Wran and Clive Evatt, his friend and Harry Seidler’s father-in-law, handed over his plans. The trouble was there were no detailed drawings, just four Finecraft models which outlined his plans for his interiors. Utzon started legal proceedings against the NSW government to get back the money he was owed.

The job fell to Ted Farmer, the Government Architect, to choose Utzon’s successor. He chose one of the finest young architects in the country – Peter Hall – whose prodigious talent had won him scholarships to Cranbook, Wesley College at Sydney University and a travelling bequest to Europe. He met his university sweetheart Libby Hall in London and they went to Europe for their honeymoon. They even visited the Utzons and stayed at their Hellebaek home. Utzon offered Hall a job in his office, but he declined in order to return to his job at the Government Architects office in the public works office, where he had worked as a trainee as part of his university scholarship. An international ban was called for by international architects, but eventually Hall took on the job of what was certainly the most unpopular job in architecture of its day. As part of the interior designs, Hall commissioned John Coburn to create the tapestry curtains of the sun and moon for the Opera and drama Halls respectively. The curtains were part of the building for the first year after it opened but were taken down because they were considered too distracting. A test hang took place earlier this year with the Hall family present – the Opera House plans to reinstate them in the future.

Against all odds, the consortium of Peter Hall, Lionel Todd and David Littlemore (silk Stuart’s father) completed the building – amid much controversy. Tragically, Peter Hall received little credit for his hard work. His marriage dissolved and it was a point of shame for his children to tell people it was their father who completed Australia’s best known building. His daughter Becca fled to London and never returned. Hall remarried but they lost a child to cot death and that marriage collapsed too. He went bankrupt many times, became an alcoholic and was once picked up on the streets by the Salvation Army. In 1994, the Unseen Utzon exhibition was his undoing. He died of a stroke aged 64. Yet another tragic figure in this Shakespearean like tale.
Utzon returned to Denmark – but was shunned by his profession there. The Danish architectural association warned him he’d never work for the government there again – because it looked like he’d “walked away” from the job in Sydney. He took private commissions at home and abroad, including one for the Baegsvaerd church Copenhagen. The job, which he completed with his family, is said to be the interior that most resembles his plans for the interiors of his Sydney Opera House. You can see the sisu roof and the lights which resemble the ones in the Utzon room.
Premier Bob Carr considers the rapprochement between Utzon and the NSW government which occurred in the early 2000s, the proudest accomplishment of his premiership. Utzon worked with his son Jan on the project and Australian architect Richard Johnson. But he never came back to Sydney. The Utzon Room and the toilets are among the additions he made to the building.

The Danish designer who dreamt up the twentieth century’s most famous building never saw his masterpiece completed. But you can see that there are many more tragedies apart from Utzon behind the triumphant white sails on Bennelong Point. Yet today it is a brand more recognised than Australia and has a total social asset value estimated to be in excess of $4.6 billion. A story that’s equal parts triumph, equal parts tragedy.