Chapter 1: 1954, A Serendipitous Idea
In 1954, an idea which had been growing in the minds of a few formed the beginning of what would come to be celebrated as the greatest building of the Twentieth Century. It would reimagine the identity not only of a city, but of a nation, and it would propel Australia culturally into the modern age.
In 1954, Charles Moses, General Manager of the Australian Broadcasting Commission introduced Eugene Goossens, conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Director of the New South Wales Conservatorium for Music to Joseph Cahill, Premier of New South Wales.
The meeting was decisive. It affirmed the idea that Australia, and Sydney in particular, needed an opera house. In agreeing to the name 'opera house', Goossens, Moses and Cahill signified their intentions: this new building was to be a home to culture, the arts, and the great stories and performances from around the world.
Cahill saw the opera house as the solution to the absence of a world class cultural centre in Sydney, Australia's economic centre and a city with a flourishing European immigrant population. It would give the people of New South Wales an opportunity to enjoy the arts in a way that previously not been possible.
Goossens and Cahill were excited by the idea. The ABC's General Manager Charles Moses and the orchestra's first conductor Bernard Heinze were also enthusiastic about the new Opera House. Both believed that the Sydney Symphony Orchestra – which had been established by the ABC in 1946 - needed a larger space in which to perform.
In the same year, Harry Ashworth and George Molnar, of the Architecture faculty at the University of New South Wales, commissioned their graduate students to design an opera house for Sydney.
The idea of an Opera House continued to draw together influential groups from different cultural and political backgrounds.
On December 7, 1955, having already formed a Committee, and with Bennelong Point selected as a site from a range of 21 locations, Premier Cahill announced an international design competition for a national opera house.
By December 7, 1956, more than 220 entries would be submitted.
