{"id":11,"date":"2025-04-29T17:13:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-29T17:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/?p=11"},"modified":"2025-04-29T17:13:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-29T17:13:03","slug":"climate-action-the-sydney-opera-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/2025\/04\/29\/climate-action-the-sydney-opera-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate action The Sydney Opera House"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Glyndebourne isn’t the only opera company taking steps towards sustainability. It is now usual among major opera houses, from the English National Opera to Op\u00e9ra National de Paris, to boast a dedicated webpage outlining their sustainability mission statements, including pledges to adhere to the UN sustainable development goals, facts and figures relating to their reduced energy consumption and carbon emissions, and details of their own planet-friendly solutions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The rooftop of the Op\u00e9ra Bastille, for example, is host to an\u00a0urban farm<\/a>, cultivated using agroecology, which also contributes to the thermal insulation of the building. This produces around a hundred weekly baskets of fruit and vegetables that are then sold to staff and local residents.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Sydney Opera House has installed an artificial reef alongside the iconic building’s sea wall, encouraging marine biodiversity<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The Sydney Opera House \u2013 a longstanding champion of environmental consciousness that achieved carbon neutrality in 2018 \u2013 has installed an artificial reef alongside the iconic building’s sea wall, encouraging marine biodiversity and supporting Sydney Harbour’s native species. Most recently, the opera house was awarded a six-star performance rating by the Green Building Council of Australia, the highest possible ranking. This is no mean feat given that perhaps the biggest challenge facing opera is achieving energy efficiency within its decades-, if not centuries-old, buildings. Indeed, in 2021,\u00a0a survey by the UK’s Theatres Trust<\/a>\u00a0found that it would cost more than \u00a31bn ($1.2bn) to make the UK’s theatre buildings sustainable.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sydney Opera House has long been a champion of environmental consciousness (Credit: Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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In the meantime, many companies have been looking to achieve sustainability through new buildings, while doing what they can to reduce waste in their pre-existing spaces. The Royal Opera House’s production workshop just outside London, built in 2015, is in the top 10% of sustainable non-domestic buildings in the UK. While Milan’s storied opera house La Scala’s new office is a zero-energy building, producing more energy than it consumes thanks to rooftop solar panels and an open-cycle geothermal system. La Scala has also cut its carbon emissions by more than \u00a0630 tonnes since 2010, according to a recent\u00a0New York Times article<\/a>, having upgraded to LED and smart lighting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Elsewhere, the Op\u00e9ra de Lyon, G\u00f6teborg Opera and Tunis Opera are currently partnered on a\u00a0new project<\/a>\u00a0investigating how best to implement the circular economy of production materials, while Leeds’ Opera North is soon to launch its first “green season”, using shared set design across its three productions, recycled or second-hand costumes, and including a new “eco-entertainment” work titled Masque of Might.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As the Theatres Trust’s study shows, there is still a long way to go, and a lot of money required, to make the changes necessary to safeguard the future of opera amid the ever-worsening climate crisis, but there appears to be no shortage of determination and imagination among opera houses in their quest to do so.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Glyndebourne isn’t the only opera company taking steps towards sustainability. It is now usual among major opera houses, from the English National Opera to Op\u00e9ra National de Paris, to boast a dedicated webpage outlining their sustainability mission statements, including pledges to adhere to the UN sustainable development goals, facts and figures relating to their reduced … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/12"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifelumen.site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}