The Holiday and Travel Magazine: SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE

Thursday 20 October 2016

SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE — THE OPERA (THE EIGHTH WONDER)

A city's icon.
An architect's dream.
A political battleground.

The story of the Sydney Opera House has more twists and turns than most operas: this is a tale you couldn’t make up. The architect walked out. The Premier died. The costs ballooned and the fate of one of the world’s most iconic buildings hung in the balance.

From the producers of Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour, this is an outdoor opera experience in an exciting new setting. Enter a nostalgic Australian wonderland of Hills Hoists and cricket pitches, settle into your seat, enjoy a glass of wine from one of the many bars, and gaze up at the Sydney Opera House, the stunning backdrop for The Eighth Wonder — our first silent opera.

The 100-metre wide steps of the Sydney Opera House will transform into an opera stage for the first time ever, harnessing cutting-edge technology to deliver a story that shaped the cultural landscape of Australia. Platforms will glide across the steps, delivering the fast-paced action. Giant screens will unfurl to display historic photos and giant glowing balls of paper, projections and lighting effects will complete the son et lumière spectacle.

The chorus and orchestra will perform live, with the sound transmitted to the audience through state-of-the-art Audio Technica headphones: you'll be cocooned in a world of pure sound.

The Eighth Wonder is a quintessentially Australian story, revealing the hopes and dreams, triumphs and failures of the artists, politicians and people of the time. Charting the dramatic creation of the world’s most famous building, scenes span from Mexico to Denmark to the Royal Yacht to a Sydney backyard.

A dozen of Australia’s finest young singers will play more than forty characters between them. Everyone who played a part in the building of the Sydney Opera House is a character in the opera, from the NSW Premier to a government engineer to a Sydney socialite. Gerry Connolly will play the Queen. This is Sydney’s story writ large, with as much behind-closed-doors scheming as you’d expect from a story about NSW.

150 aspiring architects from the UNSW Built Environment will contribute to the outdoor spectacle, creating a number of visual art installations for the site, including a 3D-printed bar table, Hills Hoists, as well as an exhibition of Max Dupain’s iconic photographs of the construction of the Sydney Opera House.