World City Guide

Culture

Sydney’s cultural life is uniquely diverse, from high classical at the Sydney Opera House to the most cutting-edge contemporary and experimental performance art. The Opera House is the major focus of attention for classical music, opera, theatre and dance.

Cultural productions and events are listed in ‘Metro’, the Friday edition entertainment section of the Sydney Morning Herald (website: www.smh.com.au). Further listings and information are provided online (website: www.sydney.citysearch.com.au).

Tickets are available for purchase from Ticketek (tel: (02) 9266 4800; website: www.ticketek.com) and Ticketmaster7 (tel: 136 100, Australia only; website: www.ticketmaster7.com). The Halftix booth, 91 York Street (tel: (02) 9261 2990; website: www.halftix.com.au), offers reduced price tickets on the day of the show.

Music: The Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point (tel: (02) 9250 7111; website: www.sydneyoperahouse.com), is the premier performance venue for classical music. The Sydney Symphony (tel: (02) 9334 4600; website: www.sydneysymphony.com), the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (tel: (02) 9251 2024; website: www.sydneyphilharmonia.com.au), Opera Australia (tel: (02) 9319 1088; website: www.opera-australia.org.au) and the Australian Chamber Orchestra (tel: (02) 8274 3800; website: www.aco.com.au) hold most of their performances at the Opera House.

The Eugene Goossens Hall, ABC Ultimo Centre, Harris Street (tel: (02) 8333 1500), tends to be used for smaller performances, as does Sydney Town Hall, 483 George Street (tel: (02) 9265 9189; website: www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au), and City Recital Hall, Angel Place (tel: (02) 8256 2222; website: www.cityrecitalhall.com). The Conservatorium of Music, Macquarie Street (tel: (02) 9351 1222; website: www.usyd.edu.au/su/conmusic), hosts symphony, wind and chamber concerts as well as jazz big bands.

Theatre: The Sydney Theatre Company (tel: (02) 9250 1777; website: www.sydneytheatre.com.au) is the city’s stylish flagship theatre company. Performances take place at the Wharf Theatres, Pier 4, Hickson Road (tel: (02) 9250 1700), the brand new Sydney Theatre, 22 Hickson Road (tel: (02) 9250 1999; website: www.sydneytheatre.org.au) and the Opera House, Bennelong Point (tel: (02) 9250 7111; website: www.sydneyoperahouse.com). Acting luminaries, such as Geoffrey Rush and Cate Blanchett, have performed at the highly respected Belvoir Street Theatre, 25 Belvoir Street (tel: (02) 9699 3444; website: www.belvoir.com.au). The Performance Space, 199 Cleveland Street (tel: (02) 9698 7235; website: www.performancespace.com.au), and the Seymour Theatre Centre, Cleveland Street and City Road (tel: (02) 9351 7940; website: www.seymour.citysearch.com.au), are the main venues for more left-field contemporary performance.

Musicals are staged at the Capitol Theatre, 13 Campbell Street (tel: (02) 9320 5000; website: www.capitoltheatre.com.au), the State Theatre, 49 Market Street (tel: (02) 9373 6852; website: www.statetheatre.com.au), and the Lyric Theatre, Star City, Pirrama Road, Pyrmont (tel: (02) 9657 8500; website: www.lyrictheatre.com.au). Newer Australian playwrights stage their work at the Stables Theatre, 10 Nimrod Street (tel: (02) 9250 7799; website: www.griffintheatre.com.au). Sydney’s longest established theatre is the Ensemble, 78 McDougall Street, Kirribilli (tel: (02) 9929 0644; website: www.ensemble.com.au).

Dance: The Australian Ballet (tel: 1300 369 741; website: www.australianballet.com.au) performs mainly traditional pieces during its summer and winter season at the Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point (tel: (02) 9250 7111; website: www.sydneyoperahouse.com). Similarly, the Sydney Dance Company (tel: (02) 9221 4811; website: www.sydneydance.com.au), the city’s leading contemporary dance group, performs at the Opera House for two seasons per year. The Bangarra Dance Theatre, Pier 4/5 Hickson Road (tel: (02) 9251 5333; website: www.bangarra.com.au), performs a fusion of contemporary and traditional dance at various venues throughout the city. The company also tours extensively, both nationally and internationally.

Film: The city’s central cinemas, situated near Town Hall, have all merged into the 17-screen Village Greater Union Hoyts George Street, 505 George Street (tel: (02) 9273 7431; website: www.hoyts.com.au). Fox Studios Australia, Lang Road, Moore Park (tel: (02) 9383 4333; website: www.foxstudios.com.au), is home to two cinema complexes – Hoyts (tel: (02) 9332 1300), which includes the luxury La Premiere cinema (tel: (02) 9332 1663), and the arthouse, Cinema Paris (tel: (02) 9332 1633). Other arthouse cinemas include the Academy Twin, 3a Oxford Street (tel: (02) 9361 4453; website: www.palace.net.au), home to the Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras Film Festival (tel: (02) 9332 4938), the Chauvel, Paddington Town Hall (tel: (02) 9361 5398; website: www.chauvelcinema.com.au), and the Art Deco Hayden Orpheum, 380 Military Road (tel: (02) 9908 4344; website: www.orpheum.com.au). First-run movies open on Thursday and discount night is on Tuesday.

The Sydney Film Festival (tel: (02) 9280 0511; website: www.sydneyfilmfestival.org) takes place every year in June, with most screenings in the magnificent marble auditorium of the State Theatre, 49 Market Street (tel: (02) 9373 6852; website: www.statetheatre.com.au). Makers of short films enter Tropfest (tel: (02) 9368 0434; website: www.tropfest.com) every February/March, with finalists shown on open-air screens set up in the Domain – a large park on the fringe of the city centre.

Notable films set or partially set in Sydney include Peter Weir’s The Last Wave (1977), P J Hogan’s Muriel’s Wedding (1993), Stephan Elliot’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1993), Ray Lawrence’s Lantana (2001) and Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich’s animated feature Finding Nemo (2003).

Cultural Events: Sydney Festival, held in January, features open-air concerts and theatre from around the world, alongside Sydney’s best. The Biennale of Sydney, held from May to July of even-numbered years, is an international contemporary art festival held in conjunction with the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras is a month-long festival in February/March, which is famous for its colourful parade along Oxford Street, attracting over half a million spectators every year. Royal Easter Show is a traditional 12-day show that brings farm life to the city during April. The Festival of the Winds is Australia’s largest kite-flying competition, held annually in September at Bondi Beach. Manly Jazz Festival, held on the Labour Day long weekend in October, is Australia’s largest, longest and best-known jazz festival, featuring traditional, big band, fusion, pop and contemporary jazz. Sleaze Ball, a fundraiser for the Mardi Gras Festival, is also held on the Labour Day long weekend in October. Up to 16,000 gay and lesbian revellers dress to a theme and party all night at Fox Studios.

Literary Notes: ‘One of the finest, most beautiful, vast and safe bays the sun had ever shone upon,’ wrote inveterate traveller Joseph Conrad in 1906. Sydney Harbour continues to inspire eulogies from writers, including Miles Franklin who, in 1946, wrote: ‘A month would not be long enough to imbibe such beauty.’ More recently, Clive James, the writer, satirist, broadcaster and critic, was rather more blunt: ‘Sydney is like Venice without the architecture but with more sea.’

Sydney’s literary luminaries include Peter Carey, who lived in the city before moving to New York, and set his Booker Prize-winning Oscar and Lucinda (1988) in 19th-century Sydney, where country girl Lucinda dreams of self-reliance and an industrial utopia. David Williamson, Australia’s most successful playwright, calls Sydney home. His Emerald City (1987) is a comedic hymn to the city’s temptations.

Patrick White, Australia’s Nobel laureate, lived in Sydney for most of his life, and passionately evoked the city’s artistic life in The Vivisector (1970). An idiosyncratic streak led Sydney-born Thomas Keneally from the priesthood to the life of a full-time novelist. He published his first novel in 1964 and was awarded the Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark (1982).

Teenagers Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette wrote Puberty Blues (1979) as an exposé of the sexual rites of passage of teens at the beach suburb of Cronulla. Robin Dalton’s Aunts Up the Cross (1965) is an affectionate memoir of Kings Cross in the 1930s, while John Birmingham’s Leviathan (2000) takes a more cynical look at the city’s history of criminals, ‘razor gangs’ and corruption.

Modern Sydney receives a sanction of sorts from one of its favourite sons, world famous art critic Robert Hughes, who wrote: ‘The provinciality that seemed to characterise Australian society, and could be plainly seen in Sydney 25 years ago, is all but gone. To a striking degree, the city’s habits have softened & Sydney is no longer quite so keen on the ‘ocker’ (Pacific redneck) image of the Australian: beer gut, thongs, nasal foghorn voice and a truculent certainty that, short of Paradise itself, Australia is the only ticket and that the rest of the world only displays its inferiority by not necessarily wanting to come here.’