Positioned above the choir stalls at the southern end of the Concert Hall, the organ reaches 15 metres in height, is 13m in width and is 8m deep. (It was finished in 1979, six years after the opera house's official opening.) ( Supplied: Sydney Opera House/Daniel Boud)īoasting some 10,244 pipes and weighing 37.5 tonnes, the Concert Hall Grand Organ is the largest of its kind in the world.ĭesigned by Sydney-based organist Ronald Sharp in the late 60s, the organ took 10 years to complete. The organ was budgeted to cost $400,000 but escalated to $1.2 million by its completion. More than 1 million tiles are checked by hand Here are five things you may not know about the Sydney Opera House. However, the general public has rarely been invited behind the scenes - until now.Ī new, three-part ABC TV series, Inside The Sydney Opera House, takes a look at how productions are staged and the inner workings of the building, from the recently completed multimillion-dollar refurbishment to its hidden, underwater workshop.Īs the site of many milestones and public controversies in the nation's history, the opera house is a treasure trove of stories, but the series lifts the curtain on some of its lesser-known facts. With close to 11 million visitors to the Sydney Opera House each year, odds are you've also ventured inside its famous sails. The World Heritage-listed building has been the site of tens of thousands of events in its near-50-year history - upwards of 38,000 have been staged in the last two decades alone. They have become iconic not just of the nation's most populous city but, for many, are also synonymous with Australia itself. If you close your eyes and think "Sydney", the white-tiled sails of the Sydney Opera House are probably among the first images that spring to mind.
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