How the Sydney Opera House Finished Peter Hall

As the mourners stood in silence and the casket began to move with awesome inevitability towards the steel gates isolating the crematorium furnace, there was a clang and it stopped abruptly. After a wait, and unseen operations, the gates re-opened. This time there was no impediment, and Peter Hall’s mortal remains disappeared into the red glare beyond. There was something symbolic about the incident, a fortuitous summing up of a life, in the mechanical failure at the North Sydney Crematorium. The incident suggested so much about Peter Hall that was left unsaid in the tearful tributes about the devastation of a brilliant life of a talented man cut short at sixty-four.

His fateful decision and subsequent role in completing the Sydney Opera House, following Jørn Utzon’s abrupt resignation and departure in February 1966, dogged Hall ever afterwards. Pro-Utzon critics never forgave him. To them he was a Dr Faustus who betrayed Utzon and his vision, who had joined with Lucifer for fame and glory. Hall’s stinking foot never healed. It was an accusation that persisted down to that fateful day in May 1995 when he died. A sober Sir Davis Hughes uncharacteristically confided afterwards: “Perhaps I pushed Peter too hard.”

History, it is said, is written by the victors. In the Sydney Opera House saga, it is impossible to decide who the true victors were. The project was a muddle from start to finish: a mixture of good intentions and errors by men and women of limited experience and inadequate knowledge, attempted at a time, in retrospect, that could hardly have been less favourable to the ambition to create a national edifice for the performing arts under circumstances with little real public support and no obvious reliable sources of funding.

Utzon’s scheme, for all its glamour, was back-to-front. It ignored three centuries of development in the design of opera houses. The site was too narrow for two halls side-by-side, and his grand scheme of a rising platform with retro-Greek theatre insets meant the audience approached from the rear, behind the stages. This crippled their use, while ensuring a glorious visual progress around the sides of each hall, which in turn created insuperable problems for the successful development of Utzon’s sketchy scheme. There were other crucial departures from traditional opera house design that would pose seemingly insurmountable challenges and stymie Utzon. A wiser man than Peter Hall would have refused the invitation, but Peter Hall was more ambitious than wise.

The recent attempt to rehabilitate Peter Hall’s reputation, to position him as the man who rescued the Sydney Opera House from disaster, by completing it six years after taking it on, is understandable—almost inevitable—given the pendulum swings of history. But is it accurate? Do the facts confirm it? Did Hall indeed rescue the Opera House, or did he pervert the artistic integrity of Utzon’s original vision?

To Anne Watson, a former decorative arts curator at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, who completed a PhD on Peter Hall in 2014, Hall has been sadly maligned, a victim of the pro-Utzon purist lobby. Their efforts on behalf of Utzon were rewarded when he was reappointed in 1998 by the New South Wales Premier, Bob Carr, to reshape the interior of the Joan Sutherland Opera Theatre and create a new western lobby and portico. The disappointing portico outcome, so out of keeping with the Opera House itself, confirmed that Utzon was not the Mr Infallible that was previously supposed.

It is important that all the relevant background is scoured, not simply selectively edited to favour a particular view, if we are to assess Peter Hall accurately and do him justice, beyond the entrenched mythology of both sides. Was he a saviour? That he finished the Opera House and was present at its completion and Utzon was not—not even invited to its official opening by Queen Elizabeth—is beyond contention. However, the behind-the-scenes story is a confused and ambiguous tale of mental breakdowns, failure to produce working drawings, a staggering cost blowout to $102 million, well in excess of Utzon’s original $17.5 million, delays on the third stage, banal details, a defective acoustic in the Concert Hall, inadequate side-stage areas, impossible orchestra pit in the opera theatre, the list goes on.

Once Utzon left, the Opera House was rebranded as an Askin Coalition government achievement and the brake on expenditure was released. Much the same occurred with the High Court building in Canberra, where Sir Garfield Barwick was rewarded for his co-operation in the Dismissal, with no limit placed on how much money was spent.

Robin Askin was undoubtedly New South Wales’s most corrupt Premier. He began by robbing banks in the Philippines during the Second World War and later was a successful SP bookie before entering politics. Askin’s connections with organised crime are well documented. His Minister for Public Works, Davis Hughes, who oversaw the Opera House from 1965 onwards, was an opportunist with a dubious past and non-existent BSc degree from Melbourne University. Finishing the Sydney Opera House was an exercise in political expediency which helped to divert public attention away from the government’s clear criminal connections. Askin reportedly informed his cabinet colleagues after their one-seat victory: “Well boys, we’ve got our hands in the cookie jar now!” The cookie jar was generous to a fault; the Hall Todd Littlemore consortium, which replaced Utzon, was paid $3 million for their efforts, a million each, nothing like the $1,250,000 paid to Utzon for nine years work ($349,342.20 short of the total $1,599,342.20 owed him).

What kind of architect was Peter Hall, where did his talents lie, and who was he? He completed the Opera House, but did he finish it—that is to say, was the result better or worse as a result?

Peter Hall was born in Newcastle in 1931, and educated at Cranbrook and Sydney University where he undertook a double degree in Classics and Architecture, finding time to represent the university in cricket. He was both a scholar and a sportsman with a gift for rhetoric, which led Ted Farmer, the Government Architect of the day, to have him deliver presentations of new projects, especially to academics. In the early 1960s, Hall designed a number of important buildings, notably extensions to the Registrar-General’s Building, the Law Courts in Taylor Square, Goldstein Hall and College Buildings for the University of NSW, for which he received a Sulman Medal in 1964, and later the excellent library at Macquarie University in 1978. Working drawings and documentation were farmed out to architects in private practice. Consequently, the actual details were the responsibility of such contractors. Hall was merely checked that they accorded with his design. Before the Opera House, Hall had little experience in producing effective working drawings detailing construction.

In 1962, as a young architectural trainee, I assisted on the site supervision of three early Hall projects. There was a scandal on the Law Court extension regarding the £500 cost of the judges’ bronze mailboxes, not a favourable omen for someone who would be appointed to rein in the Opera House budget. Hall is usually categorised as a Brutalist in the English sense: his work was far less raw than Le Corbusier, who originated the new style around 1950 in response to post-war austerity. Hall’s buildings were well-mannered hybrid Georgian/Brutalist style exercises rather than full blooded raw-concrete Le Corbusier manifestoes. Bill Wood, a South African architect with a degree in engineering, who would subsequently became Davis Hughes’s eyes on Utzon, did the site supervision. Wood was no fool, and certainly not the incompetent that Utzon and Bill Wheatland later made him out to be.

Hall’s connection with Utzon began well before 1966. While working in London on his honeymoon, Hall visited Utzon’s Hellebæk office in Denmark and attended a party given by Utzon, at which he asked for a job. Utzon turned him down. Hall’s was first signature on the staff petition in support of bringing Utzon back during the crisis following his resignation on February 29, 1966. Hall’s wife, Libby, was a strong supporter of Utzon. Their estrangement widened when Hall accepted the government’s invitation to replace Utzon after he resigned.

Peter Hall was torn between acting ethically and seizing the opportunity, an emotional dilemma he never satisfactorily resolved. On one occasion, he telephoned Utzon hoping to get his approval, which Utzon, understandably, did not offer. It is not pushing credulity to say Hall recognised he had done the wrong thing but was unable to stop himself.

Sometime before June 20, 1966, at a meeting, Hall broke down weeping and said he couldn’t go on with it. When Davis Hughes got wind of it, he sent Hall off on a three-month study tour of Europe and the US to research expert thinking on performing arts centres and dual-purpose auditoria. This was not the last such crisis: Hall was an immature, insecure individual, unsuited to the role expected of him, who did not cope at all well under the intense pressure. He was prone to alarming breakdowns, which the government was obliged to cover up.

What is not well recognised is the high price architects who win international architectural competitions often pay under the heavy burden of national expectations, exacting budget scrutiny, and the constant glare of the media. Viljo Revell died before completing his Toronto City Hall; Johan Otto von Spreckelsen (a friend of Utzon’s) died two years before La Defense Grande Arche, Paris, was completed; and Enric Mirales died in 2002, four years before his Scottish Parliament was finished. On the evidence, winning an international architectural competition is tantamount to a death sentence. That Utzon survived the Opera House, and lived to the age of ninety, is a remarkable story of survival against the odds. That the Opera House curtailed Hall’s life by two decades is a measure of the ultimate price he paid.

The 1960s was the decade of the first James Bond movies. Peter Hall found the James Bond combination—of secret service assassin and international lothario—irresistible. With so much press interest, it is understandable Hall went off the rails a little—perhaps more than a little. Hall was not someone to do things by half-measure and in his new role as a Sydney celebrity, he morphed into an antipodean version of Bond behind the dark glasses, and acquired an E-type Jaguar sports car and fast lifestyle companions to match. The government, as in the Bond movies, picked up the tab.

Leaving aside these unappealing personal foibles, whether Hall was the right architect, the best choice to finish the Sydney Opera House, is open to doubt. Was there someone better equipped? Other architects besides Hall in private practice in Sydney were approached, but none were sufficiently foolish as to imagine they could fill Utzon’s shoes. Some had submitted entries to the 1956 international competition, and this would have reinforced their perception of the difficulties involved.

Hall lacked the necessary experience and architectural maturity, and it is not the least controversial to suggest there were talented architects outside Australia who possessed considerably greater competence and knowledge, but they supported the International Union of Architects in its ban on participation, under an initiative of Harry Seidler, with support from an Utzon champion, Sigfried Giedion. Australia was isolated architecturally.

The final judgment one might bring down is that Peter Hall did his best and finished the Opera House in Utzon’s absence, but the job finished Hall. It created a reputation he could never escape.

Utzon’s design for the Sydney Opera House overturned three centuries of experience in the design and service arrangements for opera houses. It was his responsibility, his alone, to find workable solutions to such a radical departure from the customary architectural anatomy. His departure from Sydney at the most critical juncture when he was called upon to supply detailed answers and solutions to problems he had created left us with a series of questions which we may never satisfactorily answer.

Sydney, as a consequence, has been left with a conundrum of a building, a half-masterpiece, with a spectacular exterior, which lacks the climactic interiors Utzon envisaged and hoped would be even more stunning. What is now clear is that what is there is romantic foreplay on a grand scale. Lacking is the shattering climactic orgasm that would have reduced audiences to a state of breathless wonder on reaching their seats, and consummate their rising expectations after the exciting build-up outside. As a theatrical event, the Sydney Opera House is a spectacular failure. No amount of tampering with it, however hugely expensive, can rectify this lack, and somehow overcome, so late in the day, the defects that Utzon left unresolved in 1966.

The blame is spread across many individuals, but Peter Hall, by volunteering with inadequate professional preparation to complete the Opera House, must bear considerable responsibility for the disappointing outcome. He was given the money, the staff, the time—the final outcome was up to him, to him alone—and he failed.