During the 1950s, the slim finger of land at Bennelong Point was a far humbler corner of the city than it is today – the Fort Macquarie tram terminus.

The area is named after Woollarawarre Bennelong, an Eora man who was the first cultural go-between for the local Gadigal peoples and the British settlers of the First Fleet. In the 1790s, he lived there on what was then a small rocky island, in a modest brick hut built for him on the orders of the colony’s first governor, Arthur Phillip.

A worldwide search for a design for “the national opera house at Bennelong Point” was announced in 1955. It cost 10 Australian pounds to enter – equivalent to about AUD$385 in today’s money.

Of the 223 designs submitted to the competition, Utzon’s was numbered 218. Contained in the submission were just 12 drawings of his vision for a concert hall and opera theatre complex overlooking Sydney Harbour.

He was 38 years old when he set about drafting his plans for the Sydney Opera House from a small office in Hellebaek, just north of Copenhagen.

While exact accounts differ, Eero Saarinen, the revered American-Finnish architect and designer who was part of the judging panel, claimed that Utzon’s design was not included in the original shortlist of favoured plans and was only considered at his insistence.

A commemorative plaque marking the occasion, placed by Utzon  at the point where the Concert Hall and Opera Theatre would eventually intersect, can still be seen today.

Firstly, the gravelly, seawater-logged soil at Bennelong Point was thought to be incapable of supporting a building of the weight and magnitude of the proposed opera house, and secondly, the fabrication techniques required to make the building’s distinctive shells were yet to be devised.

NSW Premier Joseph Cahill , who had been the project’s greatest supporter in government, was worried the opera house development would be stymied or abandoned altogether by political opposition or a shift in public approval. He insisted that construction forge ahead, despite the glaring issues faced by the building’s engineers.

To solve the problem of the unsuitable land at Bennelong Point, 700 steel-cased concrete shafts , nearly one metre each in diameter, were bored down into the perimeter and northern half of the site . These unexpected works largely swallowed the 3.5 million Australian pounds  (equivalent to AUD$120 million today) that had been budgeted to fund the Opera House’s entire construction.

This would be the first of several engineering records set during the construction of the Sydney Opera House.

Between 1958 and 1962, Utzon and his engineers worked tirelessly from his office in Hallebaek to solve the riddle of the roof design, exploring multiple types of spatial geometry to discover the shells’ final form.

While the essence of the architect’s winning design was preserved in the building we know today, the sleek, elongated scoop of the shells as originally proposed would, in reality, have been too heavy to hold their own weight. 

The crucial epiphany of the so-called “spherical solution”  was to approach creating the Opera House roof like the skin covering an orange, with each intersecting section of the sails derived from the plane of a hollow sphere. 

While the new profile of the roof was a departure from the sea shells and overhanging cliffs that inspired the original design, the more generous volume of the revised design allowed for larger auditoriums and stage towers within the building.

They are a familiar sight across Sydney’s city skyline today, but in the late 1960s, the three specially designed tower cranes used to raise the Opera House roof, produced in France at a cost of AUD$100,000 each , were a novel innovation. 

Utzon knew that he wanted the sculptural form of the Opera House to reflect the shifting blue hues of the harbour waters and Sydney sky, but that the finish should not be so reflective as to cause excessive glare. He finally found just the right level of gloss in a Japanese bowl  with a subtly textured patina, due to the coarse, grainy clay used to make it.

The “ice” tiles are more numerous and have a glossy finish, whereas the “snow” tiles have a more matte patina, which are placed around the edges of the 4228 chevrons that cover the shells.

They were made in Sweden  and cover an area equivalent to 1.62 hectares . Only a few hundred have had to be replaced since they were first installed more than 50 years ago.

The African-American bass-baritone, actor and civil rights activist Paul Robeson made an impromptu visit to the Opera House’s  construction site during his Australian tour, where he sang Ol’ Man River, from the musical Showboat, to the workers as they ate lunch. 

By 1962, costs had ballooned to almost 14 million Australian pounds  – nearly five times the 3.5 million pounds that had been originally budgeted for the entire build. At this point in the construction, the Opera House’s iconic shells were yet to be fabricated and engineers were making expensive upgrades to the concrete podium, which had been found to be too weak to support the proposed roof structures.

Between 1963 and 1965, relations between Utzon and his government clients became increasingly fraught. Engineers cast doubts over aspects of Utzon’s experimental plywood vision for the Opera House’s elaborate interiors, while Utzon was frustrated by withheld payments running into the tens of thousands of pounds.  

Following 24 years in power, the Labor government was defeated by a coalition between the Liberal party, led by RW Atkins,  and the Country party, led by Davis Hughes . Having campaigned on a platform or reining in the rocketing costs of the Opera House, Hughes took charge of the project. Following a brief yet fateful 15-minute meeting in February of 1966, in which Hughes refused to fund Utzon’s prototypes for the plywood interiors, the architect resigned.

Less than a week following Utzon’s ousting, at least 1000 people marched on the State Parliament, led by the eminent Australian architect Harry Seidler and the celebrated The Tree of Man author Patrick White. Further rallies followed, and a petition with 3000 signatures was delivered to the Premier’s office demanding Utzon’s reinstatement.

The visionary, pride-wounded architect, maddened by red tape and political hoop jumping, left Australia in April 1966 . Despite attempts at a reconciliation, Utzon refused to return to what he viewed as his compromised masterwork, even as, in the ensuing decades, it became hailed as one of the greatest architectural accomplishments of the 20th century. At the time of his death, in 2008 , Utzon had never once stepped within its walls. 

In 1966, Peter Hall, alongside two other Aussie architects, Lionel Todd and David Littlemore, was tasked with completing the building’s interiors.

Many respected figures in Australian architecture publicly insisted only Utzon should be allowed to complete his building, including Hall initially. However, the young architect had met Utzon years earlier during a period studying in Europe, and only agreed to manage the project after speaking to Utzon on the phone.

Utzon had left his successors with only rough sketches instead of the detailed blueprints Hall and his collaborators had believed they would receive.

However, Utzon’s unflinching insistence that he not have to directly communicate with the engineers, the Sydney Opera House Executive Committee or State Government officials derailed the backchannel talks and they eventually came to nothing. 

One of Hall’s greatest accomplishments – and most challenging conundrums – was resolving a last-minute change to the building’s use . The Opera House’s largest space, originally named the “Major Hall”, was conceived by Utzon as a multi-purpose performance venue, but the ABC and Sydney Symphony Orchestra called for it to be redesigned as a concert hall specially designed for orchestral performances. 

It was used as a reception space for more than 30 years, until in 2004 an area originally conceived as a recital room for chamber music was refurbished to fit Utzon’s designs. This included the creation of a colourful 14-metre-long tapestry  which took four master weavers more than eight months to complete using 4500 kilometres of wool.  The space is now known as the Utzon Room.

As well as specialist tradespeople, artisans and artists such as the late Warlpiri painter Nelson Tjakamarra, whose large-scale work Possum Dreaming can be seen in the Opera Theatre’s northern foyer, and one of the most influential Australian painters of the 20th century, John Olsen, whose mural Five Bells adorn the Harbour-facing wall of the Opera House’s northern foyer.  

A staggering 6223 square metres of this uniquely-coloured glazing was imported from Boussois-Souchon-Neuvesel in France .

For example, the air-conditioning for the entire complex used water pumped directly from Sydney Harbour, via 35 kilometres  of pipes, to cool the interiors. The system remained in use for more than 40 years until 2017, when the building’s heating, cooling and ventilation infrastructure was overhauled. 

This is a record that remains unchallenged even 50 years later. This feat was possible thanks to an ingenious piece of engineering. The concrete ceiling beams change shape as they rise from a T shape to a Y and then a U shape,  depending on where the level of stress is greatest. These folded beams replace the need for columns to support the weight of the structure.

Yet another record that remains unbroken to this day. This colossal instrument, aptly named “The Grand Organ”, has 10,244 pipes  and was so complex that it took a decade to complete, finally playing for the first time in 1979 , some six years after the venue opened.

The hapless critter fell into one of the moulds used for the pre-fabrication of the concrete shells one fateful night. By the time it was discovered, the wet concrete had already cured making removal of the body impossible, so the decision was made to leave the dearly-departed marsupial where it fell, to become forever part of Australia’s most famous building. 

In today’s money, the AUD$102 million spent on the building’s construction would equal almost AUD$1 billion.

On the morning of 20 October 1973, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II arrived to officiate the opening of a building quite unlike any she had ever seen before. Its pearly sails, gleaming in the spring sun, looked down over countless Sydneysiders gathered on the forecourt and the aptly named Monumental Steps. A flotilla of hundreds of boats – small civilian pleasure craft strung with bunting, hulking gunmetal-grey naval vessels and Sydney’s unmistakable beige and forest-green ferries, decorated with red streamers – crowded the waters around Circular Quay. Nine fighter jets in tight formation hurtled overhead, followed by a hovering fleet of helicopters. And at the centre of this pageantry stood Sydney’s newly minted Opera House, an instant icon that would redefine how the world thought about Australia’s largest city. 

“The Sydney Opera House has captured the imagination of the world, though I understand that its construction has not been totally without problems,” she noted. However, she went on to say: “The human spirit must sometimes take wings – or sails – and create something that is not just utilitarian or commonplace.”

Crowned Mr Olympia for a seventh time , it was the highly decorated Austrian muscle man’s final professional bodybuilding competition.  He’d be back, but on the silver screen and eventually the political stage. 

A production of Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov  involved live chickens roaming the stage. During a performance, one of these feathered extras accidentally fell into the pit, landing on top of an unsuspecting cellist. 

Only recently freed from prison after being falsely incarcerated in South Africa for  27 years , Mandela spoke of forgiveness to a crowd of 40,000 from the Opera House’s Monumental Steps .

Crowded House performed their Farewell to the World event to an estimated 150,000 people,  crammed onto the forecourt.

…to the Sydney Oprah House , in honour of legendary talk show host Oprah Winfrey’s visit to the Harbour City. She hosted two special episodes  of her popular program in December 2010 from the forecourt of the Opera House, interviewing an impressive list of celebs, both homegrown and international, including Russell Crowe; Terri, Bindi and Robert Irwin; Jay-Z; Bono and Hugh Jackman, who made quite an entrance via zipline from the top of one of the Opera House sails. The actor and musical theatre star infamously acquired an accidental black eye  on his daredevil descent, all captured on camera. 

This act of mass nudity was all in the name of art, as photographer Spencer Tunick captured one of his most famous images, The Base. 

It significantly outperforms its iconic neighbour, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, which only ranks as the nation’s seventh most Instagrammed landmark.

Four years earlier, in May 2003, Utzon was honoured with the equally prestigious Pritzker Prize  – widely considered the “Nobel Prize” of the architectural community – for the Opera House’s incalculable contribution to modern architecture.

Curated by the Sydney Opera House’s then Head of First Nations Programming, Rhoda Roberts , the dazzling spectacle heroed the work of Karla Dickens, Djon Mundine, Gabriella Possum Nungurrayi, Reko Rennie, Donny Woolagoodja and the late Gulumbu Yunupingu. Titled Songlines, it was the first time the Opera House sails had been used as a canvas exclusively for Aboriginal artists. It marked a historic moment on the land that for tens of thousands of years had been known as Tubowgule  by its Gadigal custodians. 

Dogged by acoustic issues for decades, $150 million  of much-needed upgrades were made to the auditorium over the course of two-and-a-half years . These included the installation of rippling, computer-engineered acoustic surfaces and “petals” above the stage to carefully direct sound, as well as works to improve accessibility. The hall reopened with a special performance by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, led by its new chief conductor Simone Young . The evening began with the world premiere of First Nations composer William Barton’s  Of the Earth, a new commission featuring clapsticks made from the old Concert Hall stage, followed by a triumphant performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony, appropriately named The Resurrection. 

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