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Man and An Organ: Sydney Opera House
Title:
Man and An Organ: Sydney Opera House
NFSA ID
512149
Year
1981
Ronald Sharp and others worked painstakingly for 10 years to build the Grand Organ for the Concert Hall of the Sydney Opera House.
It consists of 10,244 individual pipes and is the world's largest mechanical tracker-action pipe organ. British organist and composer Peter Hurford is shown playing the instrument.
Like the Opera House itself, the organ was steeped in controversy over its budget (A$1.2 million) and the time it took to build and voice.
The first recital was performed on 7 June 1979, almost six years after the opening of the Opera House.
This is an excerpt from Man and An Organ, 1981 – Film Australia Collection © NFSA.
You can see more about the organ in this Eyewitness News story about its early stage of construction.
Notes by Beth Taylor
Director
Peter Johnson
The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia acknowledges Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work and live and gives respect to their Elders both past and present.