The Sydney Opera House
Faisal!’s photostream/Flickr (home), Gerry Shami/Flickr (above)
“The Sydney Opera House, instead of making Utzon’s career, almost ruined it.”
Geraldine Brooks,
“Unfinished Business,”
The New Yorker, 2005
Geraldine Brooks,
“Unfinished Business,”
The New Yorker, 2005
“[The Sydney Opera House calamity] grew out of the politics of the era but it is equally a tragedy of character.”
—Philip Drew, The Masterpiece: Jorn Utzon, A Secret Life
—Philip Drew, The Masterpiece: Jorn Utzon, A Secret Life
“Bob Carr, until recently the state premier, had shown me a letter that Utzon had written to him in 2003, in which he said he had ‘of course often wondered if I could have acted differently back then, in a way which would have allowed me to continue the work.’ In the letter, he concludes that the decision was ‘out of my hands.’”
—Geraldine Brooks, “Unfinished Business”
“Throughout the long estrangement, Utzon has said, he never stopped thinking about the Opera House for a single day: ‘I have the building in my head like a composer has his symphony.’”
—“Unfinished Business”