Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This clip shows entertainer Rolf Harris working on a painting of the Sydney Opera House while singing the song he composed to celebrate its official opening three weeks later on 20 October 1973. With the painting completed, he is shown in his dressing room being made up before the concert. He talks to an interviewer about how it feels to be the first person to perform in the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House and what he was trying to achieve in composing his song.

Educational value points

• The pride and excitement at the opening of the Sydney Opera House are apparent in this clip. This is conveyed in large part by the enthusiasm of the Australian entertainer Rolf Harris (1930–), who was engaged as the opening artist at a concert performance to celebrate the opening of the Concert Hall in the Opera House. Harris was well known at that time to Australian and UK television audiences as a TV presenter, painter and singer.

• Entertainer Rolf Harris features in this clip at a time when his popularity was at a peak in Australia and the UK. He left Australia to pursue a career in art in England in 1952 but soon returned to children’s TV, establishing the successful Rolf Harris Show that ran from 1967 to 1971. In 1973 he had already performed at a Royal Command Performance, had two number-one hits in the UK charts and been featured in the TV program This is Your Life.

• The opening of the Sydney Opera House gave the Australian Opera a permanent performance home and enabled the company to expand its repertoire. Prior to its opening there were no theatres large enough to stage the grander operas. In 1970, following increased Australian interest in opera generated by the return to Australia of the great soprano Joan Sutherland and her conductor husband Richard Bonynge, the Australian Opera was formed.

• In the clip Rolf Harris indicates his pride to be the first person to perform in the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall as part of its official opening celebrations. Thirteen years earlier in 1960 US singer and peace activist Paul Robeson (1898–1976) climbed onto the scaffolding of the Opera House and sang on the building site for a lunchtime audience of construction workers. The Builders Labourers Federation also organised two theatre performances for workers at the site.

• The Sydney Opera House is one of Australia’s cultural icons. Like the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the new Parliament House in Canberra, it has come to symbolise Australian architecture. Its distinctive 'sails’ make it an instantly recognisable landmark for Sydney, rather like the Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Empire State Building in New York.

• The upbeat celebratory tone of the clip ignores the controversy that accompanied the building of the Sydney Opera House. Construction began in 1957 despite the protests of its architect Jørn Utzon, who had not yet solved the engineering challenge of building the shells. Over-budget costs put Utzon at odds with the New South Wales Government and subjected him to criticism from a hostile press. He resigned in 1966, left Australia and was not present at the opening of the Opera House.

• The film is a sponsored documentary, sponsored by British Paints, and Rolf Harris includes its trademark as a 'sign off’ to his painting in this clip. As an Australian company, British Paints saw benefit in associating itself with the opening of the Sydney Opera House and employed Rolf Harris for many years to advertise its products.

• The Sydney Opera House was opened on 20 October 1973, 16 years after its architect Jørn Utzon won the international competition for its design and 26 years after Sir Eugene Goossens (1893–1962) proposed an opera house be built on Bennelong Point. Goossens, resident conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, influenced NSW Premier, J J Cahill (1891–1959) to form the committee that selected the Bennelong site and oversaw the competition that Utzon was to win.