It’s a tale as old as gentrification. A down-at-heel suburb becomes home to a thriving arts and music scene. Word spreads, and wealthy young families looking to live somewhere with a fashionable edge start buying up properties in the area. Two weeks after the first renovations finish and the yuppies move in, the council starts to receive noise complaints about a live music venue up the street that has existed happily in the community for years. Snowed under by fines and restrictions, the venue shuts. Priced and regulated out of their old homes, the arts move on or wither. Where once there was culture and movement, double-wide prams reign.
The Sydney Opera House is arguably the most recognisable music venue in the world – but even that doesn’t make it immune to these tensions. Besieged by angry neighbours, a hostile political environment, and an establishment arts scene increasingly complacent and money-obsessed, the Opera House’s days of hosting live outdoor music – a function built into Jorn Utson’s design, which it has been fulfilling since 1978 – may be numbered, or at least severely curtailed.
For the past several years, the Opera House has been locked in an ugly struggle with residents of the nearby Bennelong Apartments, a suite of luxury units frequented by the hyper-rich and powerful that’s more widely known as “the Toaster”. Outdoor concerts in the Opera House’s forecourt attract world-class acts such as Sting, Sinead O’Connor and The National, but they also attract enraged noise complaints from a group of the Toaster’s wealthy occupants: the suitably grumbly-titled Sydney Opera House Concerned Citizens Group.
Just this week, the group took their first win, when the Opera House was ordered to pay a $15,000 fine for exceeding noise limits during a forecourt concert by Florence and the Machine. But the battle had become headline-worthy three months beforehand when, during a four-night forecourt run of shows by Australia/New Zealand rock act Crowded House, lead singer Neil Finn got into an argument on Twitter with a Toaster resident unhappy with the noise down the road.
Ah, you live in the Toaster ...look forward to annoying you for 3 more nights https://t.co/7TsHnbaSaY
— neil mullane finn (@NeilFinn) November 24, 2016
Onstage at one of the shows, Finn urged the audience to “wake up Alan Jones”, the right-wing radio talkback host (and strong competitor for the hotly contested title of Australia’s foremost curmudgeon) who styles himself as the voice of the common people while living in one of the Toaster’s multimillion-dollar apartments. Jones has been outspoken against the Opera House outdoor concerts, which he says turn the landmark into an “eyesore” and a “bomb site”.
The Puritanical tendencies of the Toaster’s residents are mirrored in similar fights that have been playing out all over Sydney for years. In 2015, police stormed the stage during an Opera House indoor concert by local rock group Royal Headache after deeming the crowd too rowdy. In January the Harold Park Hotel, a century-old pub in the rapidly gentrifying inner-city suburb of Glebe, became the centre of a political stoush after the local council ordered it to abandon its weekend live music fixture following a single complaint from a neighbour. According to the then mayor of Leichhardt, it was the legal bills caused by similar complaints that sent the Annandale Hotel into receivership in 2013. And earlier this year another iconic venue, the Newtown Social Club – formerly the Sandringham – announced it would be shutting its doors because, its owners said, “the current regulatory climate in Sydney and the inherent challenges therein have made it unsustainable”.
Once renowned as a hotspot destination for international partygoers, Sydney has acquired a reputation as a city ruled by the fun police; late last year, Time Out voters ranked Sydney as the third-least fun city in the world. Controversial lock-out laws brought in by the New South Wales state government in 2014 have decimated the city’s late-night culture. The seemingly simple act of buying a drink in a bar has become an exercise in navigating the state government’s bewildering restrictions on serving alcohol past midnight. Historic nightlife districts like Kings Cross are steadily being bought up by property developers planning to build apartment towers.
Sydney’s new reputation as the sleepy nun of great cities is now so entrenched that the Premier of Victoria, Australia’s second-largest state (and home to Sydney’s longtime rival Melbourne), frequently makes political hay by mocking the city on Twitter.
In December, a state government ad campaign purporting to show the vibrancy of Sydney nightlife – showcasing such wild activities as ten-pin bowling, amusement arcades and the theatre – was execrated on social media and became a nationwide joke:
Whether or not the Opera House falls victim to the dystopia above depends on the vigour of the people charged with defending it. On that score, the House’s future looks grim. The Opera House Trust, the 10-person board that oversees the House’s operations and decides its direction, is increasingly dominated by people with backgrounds in finance, politics and property development.
Urban planners have proposed opening up some of the building’s historic concert halls to allow luxury sleepovers for well-paying guests, in conjunction with sponsors like Airbnb. (Perhaps the House could make some extra cash by hosting high-end buck’s parties, brought to you by Stoli Vodka.)
To their credit, the Concerned Citizens Group has railed against this money-driven direction as well, calling the Opera House “an icon in decline of its heritage value due to the greed inherent in commercialisation”, and arguing that the trust should renew its focus on culture and the arts. So long as it’s done quietly – one of the complaints sent to the NSW Department of Planning by a CCG member spoke with horror of “the post-event noise of patrons leaving the premises drunk and disorderly late at night,” in apparent ignorance of what buying an apartment next to one of the most-frequented tourist destinations on Earth entails.
Like that other Australian icon, the Great Barrier Reef, the Opera House and the city it represents is being bleached. If a happy medium between the NIMBY-on-Xanax mindset of the Toaster’s denizens and the money-at-all-costs nihilism of the trust can’t be found, the World Heritage-listed monument will sink in status from a beacon of culture to a tame, monetised bauble – little more than a pretty shell in the background of wealthy people’s Instagram posts.
• This article was amended on 27 February to remove assertions that proposed changes to the Opera House would mean an expansion of its bars and restaurants, and more space for corporate functions. The Opera House told Guardian Australia that the overall space for bars and restaurants would stay the same, and the space for functions would be reduced.
