

The venue is home to year-round performances from The Australian Ballet and Resident Companies Opera Australia and hosts a variety of musicals, comedy shows, modern music performances and talks. Also, unlike other theatres where the stage scenery is moved from the sides of the stage, the scenery is elevated to the stage by two large lifts in the Joan Sutherland Theatre. Featuring a beautiful proscenium arch and an orchestra pit that can fit up to 70 musicians, this isn't your average theatre. Named in honor of the famed Australian soprano, Dame Joan Sutherland, the Jane Sutherland Theatre is the second largest performance venue in the Sydney Opera House. If you're planning on watching a show at the Sydney Opera House, our seating plan has all the information you would need. Some of the prominent performances that have graced the epic stages of the Sydney Opera House include Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace, opera singer Joan Sutherland's first performance, a concert by Irish rock stars Thin Lizzy, Doll Trilogy by Ray Lawler, a speech by Pope John Paul II in 1987, Nelson Mandela's address in 1990, Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan, Pulitzer winning play Proof, a performance by Michael Buble in 2004, Oprah Winfrey's Ultimate Australian Adventure, the first VIVID live music program curated by Brian Eno in 2008. The interiors are decked with off-form concrete, brush box glulam, and Australian white birch plywood. Apart from the shells and the glass curtain walls of the foyer, the exterior of the opera house comprises of panels created from pink granite. Boasting a contemporary expressionist style, the Sydney Opera House features massive concrete shells that form the roof of the building.

After Utzon's departure from the project due to creative differences and other roadblocks, construction officially completed in 1973, 10 years after the projected year of completion. Post an extensive design competition, Jorn Utzon, a Danish architect, was declared the winner in 1957 and undertook the mammoth task of designing the opera house.

The idea for the Sydney Opera House was conceived by Eugene Goossens, the Director of the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, sometime in the 1940s. In 2007, the Sydney Opera House was officially declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. With six different theatres, each unique in its own way, there's a lot to see and do both in and around the opera house. One of the most photographed buildings in the world, the Sydney Opera House is breathtaking on the outside but that doesn't hold a candle to the wonders it houses inside. The white, sail-shaped shells on the roof of the Sydney Opera House is what makes the building so unique. One of the most iconic structures in the world, the Sydney Opera House is a certifiable icon.
