Last week Gabe and I had our first opportunity to explore Sydney’s iconic opera house as its patrons. As part of a belated birthday celebration we went to see, the Benjamin Britten composed, Baz Luhrmann directed production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. My favorite Shakespeare play, operafied and presented by one of my favorite directors seemed like a logical choice for a birthday indulgence. And indulgence it was. Opera tickets in Sydney are a far cry from Broadway tickets purchased at the TKTS booth. Seats in the third row from the back came at a decent price, and they don’t seem to have trouble selling them. The theater was full to standing room. But the experience is well worth the price.
The Opera House is just as interesting and unique on the inside as it is on the outside. The ticket booth is in the lower level, an area with low concrete ceilings, that feels somewhat like the coolest parking structure you’ve ever been in. Then a large sweeping staircases leads up to the main lobby under the high arching structures of the “sails” (although the architect never called them that). Lengthy hallways lead up either side to the theater doors, past the massive concrete structural beams that arch from thick bases in the ground to narrow points high overhead. Being at the back does come with it’s privileges. The rear lounge is just behind the massive windows that face out over Sydney’s harbor. These huge bending pains of glass, supported by artistically exposed iron feel like the windows you would only ever find on the Starship Enterprise.
The audience hall itself is like an interesting combination of a classic theater and a sports stadium. The exclusive box seats that line either side of the hall are highlighted with lean geometric designs. The chairs are made of thin Eames reminiscent bent plywood, and look both aerodynamic and comfortable at the same time. And the massive pointed structure above, disappears under a heavy blacks celling, which neatly contains all the necessary pipes and ducts behind a regular series of proportionally small vents. The steep seating in the back actually made it possible to see the whole stage over the heads in front. It’s both practical and ornate in it’s own way, industrial yet graceful, simple and beautiful.
And the Opera wasn’t bad either. Mid-summer was everything that it should be, fun, farcical, fantasy. None of the cast was afraid to ham it up when necessary, which made Opera-going a much more light hearted experience than the traditional Italian fare usually offers. And two twenty minute intermissions made what could have been a rather butt numbing experience into a pleasant evening. If only I could have decided which direction to go during intermission.
