Our second day in Sydney dawned and, after the excitment of the bridge climb, we were taking a backstage tour of the famous and much photographed UNESCO World Heritage listed Sydney Opera House in the morning with a Harbour Story Cruise in the afternoon.
The backstage tour starts at 7am as many areas visited are restricted later in the day when the performers and technical crews are at work. Performances had been cancelled and the Opera House had recently been closed due to the Coronavirus situation but lucklily for us, the backstage tour was still going ahead.
We were told on many ocassions since getting to Sydney that there were far fewer tourists than normal and only four of us took the backstage tour with two others who started the tour leaving after five minutes due to feeling unwell. Rather worrying in light of the current situation that they considered joining the tour if they felt unwell, particularly as one was a health professional.
The Opera House is on Bennelong Point, a former tram depot in the 1950s, and has an interesting history. There were times when the whole project to build it looked doomed. Bennelong Point, which is named after an aboriginal man and has significance to the Gadigal people, was an island in Sydney Harbour and in the early 19th century was made into a peninsula.
The Opera House was designed by Danish architect Jorn Utzon but was finally completed by an Australian architectural team headed up by Peter Hall and formally opened on 20 October 1973. Utzon won an international design competition in 1957 and the work commenced on 2 March 1959 with Utzon directing construction. The decision to build Utzon’s iconic design is often overshadowed by the circumstances that followed such as the time it took to complete the building, the spiralling cost and the resignation of Utzon before completion. Utzon has never returned to Australia to see the completed building.
The building comprises multiple venues and the roof structure, often referred to as “shells”, is made from precast concrete panels. The shells appear white from a distance but, up close, you can see that they have many tiles, apparently over 1 million, some white and other matt cream.
The Shells 
The Tiles
We visited all of the venues, the Concert Hall, the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Drama Theatre, Playhouse, Studio and Utzon Room, which are different sizes and used for different types of events. The Concert Hall was designed for orchestras and is home to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. It contains the 10,000 pipes Grand Organ and now also hosts other events such as comedy and the likes of Ed Sheeran. The Joan Sutherland Theatre is home to Opera Australia and the Australian Ballet.
The Joan Sutherland Theatre 
The Joan Sutherland Theatre
The view from the stage 
The Studio
As the Opera House was closed for performances there were no sets on the stages but we did get to stand on each stage and get the performers’ view. There were a miriad of lifts, trap doors, lighting rigs, revolving stages some which were still used and other that had been built as part of the original design but not ever employed. In addition there were rehearsal rooms many with a Grand Piano.
We understood from our guide that the original intention of Utzon was for the opera and ballet to be in what is now the Concert Hall and the orchestral concerts to be in the Joan Sutherland Theatre but the acoustics worked better with opera in the Joan Sutherland and orchestral in the Concert Hall so Utzon original idea was changed.
It was a very interesting visit and definitely worth doing with the final section of the visit being a very nice breakfast in the Green Room.
Unfortunately that was our last holiday event as we had been advised by our travel agent the night before to get the first flight home. It was evident that Sydney was closing down as businesses and restaurant closed, people worked from home and Tasmania, our next stop, was requiring all new non-essential persons entering the state to self isolate.
A real shame as we were looking forward to the Sydney Harbour Story Cruise and the Blue Mountains, and then Tasmania and Melbourne in coming days, but it does give us a strong reason to return to Australia, a country we liked a lot.
Copyright: Words and photos John Cruse 2020
I have so enjoyed your Blog, as usual, from the relative safety of my armchair. It’s now almost impossible to go out here, and so your stories and photos have really brightened my day! I hope you are now home safely with Little Ted. All best wishes. Liz