Sydney's icon celebrates without hero of grand design

Architect comes out of retirement to shape Opera House's future

David Fickling in Sydney, The Guardian Saturday October 18, 2003

At the celebrations to mark the 30th anniversary of its opening tonight, the Sydney Opera House will be awash with ballet, opera, pop music and champagne. Only one thing will be missing: Jørn Utzon, the Danish architect who designed it.
Two million people visit the iconic building every year, but Utzon has never set eyes on his masterpiece. The Australian authorities have tried everything to get the reclusive architect to return to the building he left unfinished in 1966, after a falling-out with the New South Wales state government. Plane tickets and cruise ships have been suggested. A film producer even offered his two Gulfstream jets to fly Utzon and his family to Australia, keeping below 18,000ft and stopping as often as the architect wanted en route.
Tonight he will be present only in the form of recorded messages and his son Jan, who is working with him on a A$70m (£28m) renovation of the complex.

It is nearly half a century since Joern Utzon won the £5,000 prize to design an opera house on the site of the old tramsheds on Bennelong point. At the time he was a relative novice. According to legend, his design was only pulled out of the stack of 233 other entries - which included depressing functionalist boxes as well as one design shaped like a gramophone trumpet - because of the enthusiastic support of the Finnish modernist Eero Saarinen.
When work began in 1959 he still had little idea of how the cluster of shells could be assembled. Originally he intended them to be made out of wire mesh, but engineers said the structure would never hold together. A flash of inspiration while toying with an orange led him to design the sails' surfaces as segments of an imaginary sphere 150 metres (500ft) across. The decision allowed the engineers to cast concrete blocks of the exact shape needed for the sails. The work was still complex: at the time, Sydney had a single computer housed in a city centre bank, and the design team had to visit it every time they came up against a problem. The NSW government became increasingly disenchanted with the project as time wore on. The lottery-funded complex should have been completed in four years with a budget of A$7m, a figure that the state premier, Joe Cahill, supposedly chose because it was the most he could get through cabinet.

But it took 14 years and A$102m to complete the building. Mr Cahill, expecting opposition from future governments, supposedly told Utzon to dig as much earth and pour as much concrete as he could before another premier could call a halt to the work.
Within a year of Mr Cahill losing the 1965 election, Utzon had walked off the project after NSW's antagonistic new Liberal government refused to pay his office fees. A team of novice Australian architects were brought in to complete the building's much-maligned interiors. Even the opera house's chief executive, Norman Gillespie, admits that their work is "just awful". Few expected Utzon to return to a project loaded with so much bitterness, especially after he retired in 1999. Promising never to return to Sydney, Utzon had quietly burned his maquettes and drawings in Denmark in 1968.

But just a few months after announcing his retirement he agreed to start work on renovating the building, along with his son and the Australian architect Richard Johnson. Jan Utzon said the changes were needed to bring the building up to date.
"If you pull the brake at the status quo, then you might risk the building dying out and becoming like a museum piece," he said. "We are still dreaming up new things and hopefully making it better and better."
The plans are bold: there will be a colonnade inspired by Mayan temples along the western edge of the building, with nine glass panels behind it to open the building's basement theatre foyers up to the harbour.
On the opposite side a reception area will be redesigned as a concert space, complete with a tapestry designed by Utzon based on the work of Bach.

The bigger problems will come with the renovation of the opera theatre itself. The space was designed as a drama theatre, and seats just over 1,500 - just two-thirds of the size of the Royal Opera House. The wings are so narrow that strips of foam have been taped offstage to prevent ballet dancers crashing into the walls, and sets used for touring productions from Melbourne's Victorian Arts Centre have to be cut down to fit the stage.
Worse still, the orchestra pit is too small for the musicians needed for performing grand opera. Extending the pit would mean cutting into the tie beam, a vast underground chinstrap of concrete holding the roof shells together. "Ten years ago nobody would have dared do that, but with the technology now you can cut it and the shells will not collapse," Mr Gillespie said.
The work will require the opera theatre to be closed for a year, and there are still bolder plans on the drawing board to drop the theatre's floor and open up enough space to create a world-class hall.
Mr Gillespie said Utzon's absence would not dampen the celebrations. "He doesn't need to come," he said. "Every inch of it is in his mind, he knows it intimately. If you talk to him, it's as if he has been here."

Versöhnung mit Sydney

Jørn Utzons Interieur für das Opernhaus

Rudolf Hermann, in: NZZ 27.09.2004

Das Opernhaus von Sydney ist ohne Zweifel die Architektur-Ikone Australiens - von außen. Weil der Architekt Jørn Utzon 1966 das Projekt vor der Vollendung im Zerwürfnis mit dem Auftraggeber, dem australischen Gliedstaat New South Wales, verlassen hatte, wurde es im Inneren nicht nach Utzons Intentionen vollendet. Doch 31 Jahre nach seiner Einweihung hat der prominent am Hafen gelegene Gebäudekomplex ein von Utzon entworfenes Interieur bekommen.
Nachträglich erweist es sich als Vorteil, dass der Reception Room trotz prächtiger Aussicht auf das Hafenbecken immer ein Mauerblümchendasein fristete. Mit einem grünen Teppich und schwerem Holztäfer war er dunkel und für offizielle Empfänge wenig geeignet. Er wurde deshalb nur selten benützt und auch nie modernisiert. Glücklicherweise, denn als vor fünf Jahren Utzon auf Anfrage der Regierung von New South Wales zusagte, Designprinzipien für eine Innenrenovation der Oper auszuarbeiten, genügte es, den Teppich und die Holzverkleidung zu entfernen, um vierzig Jahre zurückzublenden und Utzon die Gestaltung eines Innenraumes nach seinen ursprünglichen Vorstellungen zu ermöglichen. Was nun der Öffentlichkeit übergeben worden ist, ist allerdings nicht Utzons Entwurf von 1965, sondern ein vom Architekten selbst behutsam um seine Erfahrungen der letzten vier Jahrzehnte angereichertes Interieur.
Für Trevor Waters, den Projektleiter des Reception Room, zeigt Utzons einziges (und einzig mögliches) Original-Interieur in der Oper, wie visionär das ursprüngliche Konzept und wie perfekt Utzons Gefühl für das richtige Material war. Der Boden aus Eukalyptus-Parkett hellt den Raum auf, und die nunmehr aus klarem Glas bestehenden Fenster geben den Blick auf das Wasser unverfälscht frei. Vor allem aber strahlen die Sichtbeton-Balken eine ganz neue Atmosphäre aus. Schließlich beherbergt der Utzon-Room (wie er zur großen Freude des Architekten jetzt offiziell heißt) auch ein Unikat: eine vierzehn Meter lange und knapp drei Meter hohe, von Utzon selbst entworfene Tapisserie. Entstanden ist die von Musik und Malerei inspirierte Arbeit in Zusammenarbeit mit Utzons Tochter Lin sowie Grazyna Bleja, der Leiterin des Victorian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne. Nun symbolisiert das Werk die späte Versöhnung des Dänen mit Sydney.

Die Größe der kleinen Dinge

Zum Tod von Jørn Utzon, dem Erbauer der Sydney-Oper und Begründer der ikonischen Architektur

Gerhard Matzig (SZ, 01.12.08)

Sein weltberühmtes Werk, die Oper von Sydney, hat er nie in Vollendung erlebt. Wer aber bis zuletzt gehofft hatte, dass sich der dänische Architekt Jørn Utzon, der im April seinen 90. Geburtstag feierte, irgendwann doch noch mit dem fünften Kontinent und der Geschichte eines der bedeutendsten Bauwerke des 20. Jahrhunderts aussöhnen möge, muss diesen Wunsch nun endgültig aufgeben. Utzon starb am Samstag, 29. Nov. 2008, in Kopenhagen.

Als Utzon 1957 den Wettbewerb zum Neubau eines Opernhauses auf der Landzunge im Hafen von Sydney gewonnen hatte, musste sich die Öffentlichkeit erst danach erkundigen, wer denn dieser Utzon eigentlich sei. Der Sohn eines Schiffsbauers, der bei Asplund, dem Vater der modernen skandinavischen Baukunst, studiert hatte, war ein unbekannter Nachwuchsarchitekt, als seine suggestiven Skizzen von der neuen Oper für Furore sorgten. Mehr als ein paar Skizzen gab es allerdings auch nicht, als man in Sydney voreilig zu bauen anfing. Es war nicht mal klar, ob sich die charakteristische Silhouette der Betonschalen, die sich wie Segel über einem Plateau wölben, konstruktiv überhaupt verwirklichen ließen. Die Kosten schätzte man auf umgerechnet dreieinhalb Millionen Euro. Es wurden 50 Millionen. Und aus den veranschlagten sieben Jahren Bauzeit wurden 16 Jahre.

Endgültig fertig wurde die Oper erst im Jahr 1973. Schon 1966 hatte sich Utzon, ständig in der Kritik wegen steigender Baukosten und mangelnder Planungssicherheit, im Streit von dem Projekt losgesagt. Er verließ Sydney im Planungschaos und schwor sich, "niemals " nach Australien zurückzukehren. Vollendet wurde die Oper schließlich von anderen Architekten.

So erlebte er, in baulicher Vollendung, nie die perfekte Symbiose aus rationalen, nämlich konstruktiven Aspekten und gestisch wirksamer, lichtintensiver Raumkunst, durch die sich die Oper auszeichnet - und auch Utzons relativ schmales Gesamtwerk weithin überstrahlt. Für Utzon hatte die Form nicht der Funktion zu folgen, sondern es galt, Funktion und Form in Übereinstimmung zu bringen. In der Nachkriegsmoderne war er einer der wenigen Gestalter, der dem großen Missverständnis der klassischen Moderne ("form follows function") nicht erlag. Er selbst schrieb einmal: "Wenn Form und Funktion eines Raums harmonisch verschmelzen sollen, ist die Voraussetzung für gute Architektur ein Bedürfnis nach Behaglichkeit. So einfach und vernünftig ist das. Es setzt die Fähigkeit voraus, allen Forderungen nach Harmonie, die mit der Aufgabe verbunden sind, gerecht zu werden und sie zu einer ganz neuen Einheit zu bringen - so wie die Natur es macht."

Utzon war deshalb mit der "Muschelschalen"-Oper nicht nur ein Vorreiter des heute so modisch begriffenen organischen Bauens - sondern auch ein Mitbegründer ikonischer Architektur. Aber nicht um des Spektakels willen oder zum höheren Ruhm eines Label-Bauherrn, sondern aus einem schlichten Bedürfnis nach Raumkraft, Harmonie und Behaglichkeit. So einfach ist das - und so vernünftig.

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Under full sail

Sydney Morning Herald, October 18, 2003

Boats crammed the harbour and people crowded the foreshores as the Queen opened the Sydney Opera House on October 20, 1973. Those who worked on and in that magical building share their memories of its first 30 years.

Geoffrey Rush, actor
In 1973 I was a fledgling actor with the relatively new Queensland Theatre Company. A hippie intellectual, university graduate maverick playing the greasepaint repertoire. Gough Whitlam was not long in. Oz voices were loud and brash and playful. In plays and films and books. It felt like a cultural fuse had been lit.
And the Opera House was opening. I made a traitorous pilgrimage to sinful Sydney from the rigorous underground of the banana state and marvelled at this strange new '50s Martian building the way I would marvel at the Eiffel Tower a couple of years later when I became a student in Paris. Something about architecture and curves.
The matinee of Jim Sharman's production of The Three-penny Opera made me book straight back in for an evening show. Donald Smith, a former Queensland canecutter with a harelip, sang in Pagliacci and it was the first time ever in a theatre where I've wept, applauded, been frightened, cheered and had a hairs-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck oceanic sense of transcendence all at the same time.
In the papers, people complained that women's stilettoes were being sacrificed on the presumably ill-thought-through granite forecourt. Actors quite rightly whinged about the aesthetically compromised debacle of the Drama Theatre. But in the subsequent decades I've played there in Wilde and Chekhov and Gogol and have always thought it, despite all, to be marvellous.

John Bell, artistic director, Bell Shakespeare Company
I read somewhere that Utzon had based the northern walkway of the Opera House on the ramparts of Elsinore Castle. I haven't been able to verify that, but it doesn't matter: when I was directing Hamlet earlier this year I used to pace around the walkway late at night when it was entirely deserted. I'd stare over the edge, watch the waves breaking against the stone blocks and think, this is how Hamlet felt. Did I see a ghost? Not really, but I know the place is full of them; they are the memories of all the happy evenings I have spent in the Opera House.

Rolf Harris, entertainer
On September 28, 1973, I staged the first-ever performance in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House - three weeks before it was officially opened.
In the '60s, while the Opera House was under construction, I had been taken on a tour of the half-completed building by entrepreneur Jack Neary. It was a stunning sight even then, and when I said I'd love to perform there when it was finished, Jack said he'd do his very best to make it happen. He was as good as his word.

Ernie Dingo, actor
I had seen pictures of the Opera House, the city in the background, the Bridge in the foreground, but as a teenager, 30 years ago, it was a long way away from Western Australia.
Nine years later I had the great fortune of acting on its stage in Jack Davis's Dreamers in October, 1982. A whole month at the Opera House. Walk to work. Round the corner at Circular Quay off George and there she was. She looked like beautiful white swans in the late afternoon light.
Everyone inside performed sacred rituals for those who came to see. Musicians, dancers and actors all glorified by the workers who never took their bows. Now they can raise their glass or stubby and give three hearty cheers and say: "Thanks, mate. Job well done. Happy 30th birthday." I know I will.

Ronald Prussing, principal trombone, SSO
The Sydney Opera House has loomed large in my life. I watched the official opening from my father-in-law's apartment in Kirribilli and I was fortunate enough to participate in the official opening concert by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras.
It was an all-Wagner affair, with Birgit Nilson singing the Immolation scene from Gotterdammerung, a role she had made famous both on stage and on a recording with Sir Georg Solti and the Vienna Philharmonic. During one of the rehearsals, the players thought they may be playing too loud for Nilson. Mackerras responded with suitable contempt for our concerns: "You will never drown her out - just keep playing."

Peter Kingston, artist
Back in the '70s, struggling through my first year in architecture along with Jan Utzon at the University of NSW, I was invited to the Utzon home at Palm Beach for an evening meal. It was exciting but what I could possibly have to say to the great man. And what were we going to eat? What would Danish food be like? I began to imagine a table full of exquisitely prepared Danish delicacies presided over by the Utzon women, Liz and Lin.
The family had an aura, they seemed beyond this world. They were all as handsome as could be and extremely welcoming. The food turned out to be battered fish and chips from the local takeaway and much enjoyed. Joern asked what I was studying and I reluctantly told him architecture, adding that I had actually finished an arts degree first. Joern was pleased. All architects should study the humanities before tackling architecture, he said.
I never saw him again. We all sensed something pretty important was at stake later when we marched up Maquarie Street to protest after Utzon was forced out of the project. We all felt we'd let him down badly. The added tragedy was that Utzon wanted to make this place his home. Just think of the wonderful national art gallery and parliament house we might have had.
As an artist today, I find the Opera House almost impossible to capture. But I keep on trying. Best viewed from the Cahill Expressway, where the mutilated bits are hidden, it's always different and, like nature, takes on what is happening with the light all around it. Lloyd Rees captured it best when he merely indicated it on the right-hand side giving centre stage to a massive burst of light through the clouds onto the water, which he'd experienced while riding the ferry into Circular Quay.

Yvonne Kenny, singer
The first official opera performance in the Opera Theatre of the Sydney Opera House was Prokofiev's War and Peace performed by The Australian Opera in the opening season in 1973. However, before that, in July 1973, I was part of a "trial run", to give staff an opportunity to test the stage mechanics and lighting.
Two one-act operas were performed to paying audiences by the Opera School of the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. The pieces were Larry Sitsky's The Fall of the House of Usher (based on the story by Edgar Allen Poe) and Dalgerie by James Penberthy, the story of a young Aboriginal girl and her love for a station manager. I remember the incredible excitement I felt as a young opera student, going into that magical building for the first time.
I played the sister in The Fall of the House of Usher with John Wood as my twin brother and John Main as the narrator. The need for a trial run for the Opera Theatre became apparent, when on our first performance, the stage machinery jammed making it impossible to change the set. We performed the piece on an empty stage in full working lights - not quite the required atmosphere for a ghoulish ghost story!
The second piece, Dalgerie, included a group of Aboriginal dancers who had travelled from Arnhem Land. I remember being fascinated by their music and dances, which included a traditional fertility rite. I have a clear image of us all sitting together in the green room backstage and sharing a remarkable moment in the history of our country. What an entirely appropriate choice it was for the first operatic performance in the new house.

Jack Mundey, unionist
I worked on the Opera House in 1959-60 as a builder's labourer. In 1962 I was elected an official of the NSW Builders Labourers Federation and secretary in 1968, so I had a very intimate connection with it during those turbulent years.
During the '60s and '70s, the Opera House workers were involved in many political campaigns, including those against the Vietnam War and apartheid in South Africa.
Paul Robeson, the American singer and peace activist, was the first artist to perform on the site when he sang for a lunchtime audience of workers. The BLF also brought Doreen Warburton's Q Theatre to the Opera House workers. Jim McNeil's play, The Chocolate Frog, about life in prison, was the first play performed for the workers at lunchtime on the site.
When it was nearing completion, I said to one of the workers who'd been there since the first day: "You have had a good run, Giuseppe. Fourteen years is a long time for a building worker to be on the one site."
"Yes, Jack," he replied, "though don't you think we should build another one at Kirribilli, looking back this way. Only one looks a bit lopsided."
I successfully campaigned for 100 workers to be invited to the Opera House opening. Sir Robert Askin introduced the Queen, and we cheered Gough and Margaret Whitlam as they alighted from a boat at Man O'War steps. Someone asked Sir Robert how Gough was arriving from Kirribilli. Sir Robert replied, "Let him walk across." I hope the workers who built this special building will be remembered 30 years on.

Brett Sheehy, director, Sydney Festival
For 18 years I've been so lucky to be with companies performing in and around this, the most beautiful building on earth. But it is the Sydney Festival's panoply of events, inside and outside the House, which has brought me the greatest pleasure.
We've helped bring brand new audiences into the House (I have never seen such a mix of patrons as the Deep Purple fans, the george fans and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra fans, who all rubbed shoulders in the one concert experience during the 2003 Festival); that we've helped make the forecourt a natural performance arena for this city; and that we've had the privilege to call the House "the Home of the Festival".
But for all the hundreds of thousands of people we've played to, no one has moved me as much as the little girl - five years old - who'd come from Bass Hill with her grandma to see Transe Express's Celestial Bells on the forecourt last year. They sat in front of me and at the end of the show, the little girl said: "Grandma, I love you for bringing me to this, I won't forget it until I'm grown up at least."
That experience cost them the price of a couple of bus tickets and yet it lifted their hearts beautifully. It gets no better than that.

David Williamson, playwright
When the Sydney Theatre Company does my latest play, Amigos, in the Drama Theatre of the Opera House in April next year, it will be the 15th of my plays that have been performed in that great edifice. I consider this an incredible privilege. The Opera House is one of the supreme imaginative achievements of the 20th century and what artist wouldn't want to be part of its repertoir?
One can be struck mute on a sunny afternoon as its glistening white tiles effortlessly proclaim its formal beauty, but some of the great nights of my life have been relaxing with the cast after the tension of an opening night in the green room backstage, probably the shabbiest area in the whole edifice.
Its battered old sofas and chairs convey little or no hint of the grandeur of the exterior, but after the show is finally on the road, it's where we all head. And it's where the tensions of the actors, the director, the crew and the playwright dissipate.
Actors have always been very special people to me. Before they bring their huge talents to bear, all I have is words on a page, so it's with a very special feeling of affection and privilege that I've shared those green room nights with them. Their gallows humour is something akin to soldiers who've been under intense fire on a battlefield and survived, except that the quality and timing of the anecdotes is considerably better than your average footsoldier's.
So when someone mentions the Opera House, the first image that hits me isn't those majestic sails we've seen on a thousand postcards, but a cavernous pit made resonant in my memory by a legion of wonderful actors letting off steam. Loudly.

Richard Tognetti, artistic director, Australian Chamber Orchestra
There is a particular smell backstage at the Opera House. Like all smells, it is exaggerated by nerves. I recall the fear and excitement I felt as a student walking through the backstage rabbit warrens of the SOH imagining that I would be performing in an important concert on the Concert Hall stage later that night.
As practice rooms at the old Conservatorium were hard to procure, I'd sneak into the House to practise. During my practice sessions I'd imagine I was getting ready for these concerts and it was a thrilling feeling.
Now performing at the SOH is a regular actuality yet the thrill and the smell remain. Promenading towards those big sails (or curled orange peel), climbing the stairs and waiting for that green light to go on at the side of the stage and getting the "GO" from the stagehands, one feels like a Formula One driver leaving the pit.

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Die schönste Mehrzweckhalle der Welt

Vor 30 Jahren öffnete Sydneys Oper.
Erst jetzt werden die ambitionierten Pläne für das Haus vollendet

Von Michael Lenz, in: Berliner Zeitung, 21.Okt. 2003

SYDNEY, 20. Oktober. Der prächtige Bau schmückt das ganze Land. Wann immer es in Australien etwas zu feiern gibt, bildet Sydneys Opernhaus dafür die prächtige Kulisse. Silvester, Olympia oder - wie zuletzt - die Eröffnung der Rugby-WM immer steht Sydney Opera auf der Einladungskarte. Nun feiert das markanteste Bauwerk des Landes seinen 30. Geburtstag. Seine ganze Schönheit entfaltet das an drei Seiten von Wasser umgebene Opernhaus im Zusammenspiel mit seiner Umgebung: der stählernen Hafenbrücke, der Glasgiganten von Sydneys Innenstadt, dem Grün der Royal Botanical Gardens, dem Blau des Himmels und der strahlenden Sonne. Die weißen Segel seiner Dächer erscheinen von jener Leichtigkeit, die dem Lebensgefühl der Australier entspricht.

So ist Sydneys Oper längst zum festen Bestandteil des Selbstbewussteins des Landes geworden. Auch des politischen Selbstbewusstseins. Etwa vor drei Jahren als Ort des Corroboree - die symbolische Versammlung zur Versöhnung des weißen und schwarzen Australien. Oder vor einem halben Jahr, als es Gegnern der australischen Beteiligung am Irakkrieg gelang, in leuchtend blutroter Farbe den Slogan "No War" - kein Krieg - auf eines der steilen Segeldächer zu schreiben. Sydneys Opernhaus ist der Treffpunkt des Landes. Im Edelrestaurant "Bennelong" in der kleinsten der drei Hallen, die neben der eigentlichen Oper und der Konzerthalle das Ensemble Opernhaus ausmachen, bereiten sternengekrönte Spitzenköche die Speisen zu. Die Liste der Stargäste auf den Bühnen des Hauses liest sich wie ein Who's who der zeitgenössischen Kultur. Dort traten so illustre Künstler auf wie der Dirigent Leonard Bernstein, die Jazzmusikerin Ella Fitzgerald, der Tänzer Michael Barischnikow, die Bee Gees und die australische Operndiva Dame Joan Sutherland. Aber auch Kaliforniens neuer Gouverneur Arnold Schwarzenegger feierte dort Triumphe. Der nämlich gewann 1980 in der schönsten Mehrzweckhalle der Welt seinen letzten Body-Builder-Titel als Mr. Olympia.

Mit Ausstellungen, Partys und Konzerten feierten die Australier am Montag nun den 30.Jahrestag der Eröffnung des Bauwerks. Und ein wenig mit Wehmut. Mit gutem Grund. Erst im April dieses Jahres war sein Schöpfer, der Däne Jørn Utzon, für sein Lebenswerk mit dem Pritzker Award ausgezeichnet worden, dem angesehensten Architekturpreis der Welt. "Das Opernhaus von Sydney ist sein Meisterwerk und eines der großen Kultgebäude des 20.Jahrhundert - ein Symbol nicht nur für die Stadt, sondern für das ganz Land und den Kontinent", hieß es in der Laudatio. Der Preis war eine Genugtuung für den mittlerweile 84-jährigen Utzon. Heftig war er einst in Australien für seine ambitionierten Pläne kritisiert worden. So heftig, dass er 1966 - sieben Jahre vor Vollendung des Opernhauses - das Land verließ und in seine dänische Heimat zurückkehrte. Die hohe architektonische Auszeichnung versöhnte ihn zuletzt mit seinen australischen Kritikern. Zumindest aus der Ferne. Denn Utzon ist die Reise zu den Jubiläumsfeiern nach Australien zu beschwerlich. Sein Sohn wird ihn bei den Feierlichkeiten vertreten. Und er wird an einen Satz seines Vaters erinnern. Der sagte einmal: "Was für mich zählt, ist, dass die Menschen von Sydney die Oper lieben."

Vielleicht werden die Menschen von Sydney die Oper bald noch mehr lieben. Das enge, muffige Innere der Oper soll endlich nach Utzons ursprünglichen Plänen umgestaltet werden. "Utzon liefert uns die Designprinzipien, auf deren Grundlage Architekten in den kommenden Jahrzehnten arbeiten können", freut sich Joes Skrzynski, Vorsitzender des Sydney Opera House Trust. Damit wäre die Versöhnung Utzons mit Australien komplett. Immerhin die Vielfalt der Nutzung und Nutzer seines Bauwerkes stimmt Utzon heiter. Er sagte einmal: "Was für mich zählt, ist, dass die Menschen von Sydney das Haus lieben."

Rückbau ab Sommer 2005

Mit einem umfassenden Innenumbau des Opernhauses von Sydney im nächsten Sommer soll das lang andauernde Zerwürfnis zwischen dem 85-jährigen dänischen Architekten Jørn Utzon und den australischen Behörden endgültig beendet werden. Der zur Mitarbeit eingeladene Utzon wird den Umbau von seinem Wohnsitz auf Mallorca aus leiten. Ziel der Intervention ist neben der Verbesserung der Akustik eine Anpassung des Innenausbaus an die ursprünglichen Pläne. Utzon hatte 1957 die Ausschreibung für das Opernhaus am Hafen von Sydney gewonnen. Nach einem Zerwürfnis mit der Bauherrschaft verliess er 1966 Australien für immer. Dies führte zu einer Umänderung der Pläne für den Innenausbau des 1973 eingeweihten Musentempels. (NZZ 13.Feb.2004)
 

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