Australia News: Sydney Opera House, Festivals Adelaide, Elton John

Two-year renovations began Feb. 1 at the Sydney Opera House’s 2,000-seat Concert Hall. The work will cost A$150 million ($100.3 million) for better sound and access and allow more ambitious productions with a purpose-built winch room.

Changes include enlarging and lowering of the stage for more intimacy between performer and audience, flat-faced panels being replaced by timber for a more natural sound, a new “flying” system for lighting, automatic draping, 34 new wheelchair spaces on the floor and an upgraded PA system to cope with contemporary music.

Ben Harper called the venue, which opened in 1973, “the greatest indoor performing space on earth.” 

Contemporary music moves 120,000 tickets a year at the Opera House, up from 30,000 in 2010. Recent shows have been held by Lizzo, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis, Solange Knowles and The Cure.

SOH production manager Andrew Mackonis has admitted it is a battle “to balance all the technical requirements for a space that was never really designed to do what we do now. The room is essentially a giant timber echo chamber. Which obviously can be a challenge for orchestral music, but it’s also problematic for amplified music.”

The Opera House will utilise its six other indoor and two outdoor spaces during the two years of renovations, but the Concert Hall’s closure is still expected to cause a loss of $A20 million ($13.3 million) in ticket sales and food and beverages. 30 staff and 155 casual employees were let go.

Justyna Jochym, the new CEO of Festivals Adelaide, an alliance of eleven festivals in the South Australian capital, began her work Feb. 3. Jochym was previously at Poland’s Krakow Festival Office and chaired UNESCO Cities of Literature. 

The association’s chair Ian Scobie said,  “Ms Jochym’s robust history within the international festivals market and associated high caliber positions established her as the key candidate for the position.” She replaces Christie Anthoney who held the position since 2013.

The eleven festivals include Adelaide Festival, Adelaide Fringe, WOMADelaide, Feast, The Cabaret and Guitar Festival. A June 2019 Adelaide Festivals Economic Impact report estimated they injected $109.1 million ($72.3 million) a year into the South Australian economy.

In the meantime, Elaine Chia takes over April as executive director of Adelaide Festival. She was CEO of Sydney’s City Recital Hall since 2016.

Elton John was forced to abandon his Jan. 31 A Day On The Green outdoor winery show after a torrential downpour began 95 minutes into the show. 

Ironically, temperatures were close to 40ºC when he took to the stage at Rochford Wines in Yarra Valley, Victoria.

“It’s fucking hot,” he told the crowd good-naturedly. “Thank you for buying a ticket to the show. We love doing it, even though it’s hot.” 

Midway through “Funeral For Friend”, the rains came. The piano man continued to play as assistants covered him with ponchos but after ten minutes producers had to abandon ship. There was “damage to musical instruments and monitors on stage,” explained A Day On The Green, which is rescheduling the show.