Next year marks the 50th birthday of the Sydney Opera House, a labour of love built by 10,000 construction workers over 14 years. To celebrate, we’re taking a closer look at the world’s most stunning opera venues, ranging from a Versailles-inspired masterpiece to an opera house commissioned by mistake (trust us, it’s a fascinating story)...

The mixed inspiration for the lemon-yellow Hanoi Opera House, constructed in the early 1900s, was classical Greek architecture and the opera house in Paris. Architectural highlights include the Versailles-inspired mirror room on the second floor, the generous use of Italian marble and the copper-plated first floor chandeliers. Today, it’s home to the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra, Hanoi Philharmonic Orchestra and Vietnam’s National Ballet. It soon won't be the only opera house in Hanoi though – renowned architectural firm Arup has been asked to design the city’s new opera house, an igloo-like structure which will float on the shores of the city’s Dam Tri Lake.

No expense was spared for the construction of Chicago’s Civic Opera House, now home of the Lyric Opera. It was built in 1929 and was designed to resemble an enormous throne. Today, the 3,270-seat venue is America’s second-largest auditorium as well as the world’s tallest, occupying the first six storeys of a 45-storey skyscraper. Although there’s plenty of opulence, including Austrian crystal chandeliers and elaborately stencilled designs, the main auditorium is surprisingly sparse. The reason? Fears that added extras such as thick velvet curtains would absorb sound.

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Sarasota Opera House opened in 1984 after a 320-seat theatre was transformed into a venue suitable for opera productions – although its Mediterranean Revival-style architecture, typified by Moorish and Spanish design elements, makes it unusual by opera house standards. The venue hosts an annual Opera Lovers Week and performances at the next event, in March 2023, will include Madama Butterfly.

The Chongqing Grand Theatre, perched on the banks of the River Yangtze, has been designed to resemble a ship, its striking silhouette often obscured by Chongqing’s infamous smog. Perhaps surprisingly, it’s a pretty sustainable structure: it's the world’s largest building to rely on water-powered air conditioning, slashing running costs by 30%. Performances are regularly projected onto the building’s exterior, made of pale green glass, and past performers include José Carreras and the legendary pianist Richard Clayderman.

Built in 1898 by French architect Eugene Ferret, this Vietnamese opera house was constructed almost entirely with materials shipped over from France. Apparently predicting how busy Ho Chi Minh City's centre would get in the coming century, Ferret designed the building to sit 6.5 feet (2m) above street level in order to reduce traffic noise in the auditorium. Its most notable features include its stone ornaments, granite flooring and huge crystal chandeliers, and the oval auditorium was designed to ensure perfect views from every one of its 468 seats.

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Widely considered one of the world’s finest opera houses, the Teatro Colón owes its existence to a row of brothels, as the construction of the original theatre, built in the 1800s, was part of an attempt to bring some sophistication to a city centre filled with houses of ill repute. Unusual features included a separate gallery for people infected with yellow fever, which was sweeping the country at the time. The current Teatro Colón opened in 1908, and its supersized stage has since won the approval of big names like Pavarotti, who raved about its acoustic qualities.

A true explosion of opulence, the UNESCO-listed Palacio de Bellas Artes opera house is a masterpiece on which no expense was spared, from the generous use of Carrera marble to the numerous hand-painted murals by Mexican artists such as Diego Rivera. It’s another opera house to shun the traditional velvet curtain – instead, there’s a 24-tonne folding panel made from a million pieces of Tiffany glass.  

In 1967, Marta Becket stumbled across an abandoned Spanish Colonial Revival community centre in the tiny town of Death Valley Junction. Inspired by the opulent opera houses in France, Italy and Spain but faced with a much smaller building in a state of disrepair, Becket extended the stage and gave the interior a makeover with the help of elaborate murals. Today, the venue hosts operas as well as plays, acoustic sets and spoken word performances, and there are daily guided tours of what might just be the most unusual opera house in the world.

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Built with profits generated by the Amazon’s rubber boom, no expense was spared during this venue's construction in the late 1800s despite Manaus's remote location. Building materials shipped for the project included steel trusses from Glasgow and roof tiles from Alsace (36,000 of them, painted in the colours of the national flag). Italy’s contribution was Murano glass chandeliers and Carrera marble for the staircase. Italian artist Domenico de Angelis travelled to Manaus to paint the beautiful ceiling murals, and the theatre’s curtain, depicting the point at which the Rio Negro and the Solimões rivers meet, was made in Paris.

This beautiful venue, a member of America’s National Trust for Historic Preservation, was opened in 1879 by Horace Tabor, a businessman determined to introduce some culture to this famously rowdy mining town. The cement used for the 16-inch-thick (41cm) walls was shipped to Leadville over one of America’s highest mountain passes, and the city’s first gas-powered lights were installed to illuminate the interior, with its brightly painted walls, frescoes and hand-painted stage curtains. Harry Houdini, Oscar Wilde and Buffalo Bill have all performed here.

A fittingly bling-tastic opera house with an auditorium that can transform from a theatre to a concert hall with the flick of a switch, the Dubai Opera is shaped like a traditional Emirati dhow (traditional Arabian ship). The venue’s 'bow' contains the orchestra pit and stage, and the 'hull' hosts the lobby. It’s one of the world’s most hi-tech opera venues, thanks largely to an overhead acoustic shell that reflects sound onto the audience below.

A purpose-built venue constructed with Chinese opera in mind, the Xiqu Centre is a seven-storey arts space with multiple performance areas. These include a main 1,075-seat auditorium and the smaller Tea House Theatre, modelled on a traditional Chinese teahouse. Feng shui also played a significant role in its design – walls are mostly curved, and courtyards and pavilions were added to maximise energy flows and instil a sense of serenity. There are also no main doors; instead, the audience arrives through the building's four corners.

This opera house in Germany has many interesting features, from its four rooftop panthers (a tribute to the god of pleasure, Dionysus) to the shell-like structures which improve the acoustics for visitors with balcony seats. Perhaps the most curious though is its 'digital clock', installed in 1841. Dresden clockmaker Johann Christian Friedrich Gutkaes was asked to design the opera house’s timepiece, but there was no room for a round clock face. His solution? A 'digital' clock which showed both hours and minutes (albeit rounded to the nearest five minutes).

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Tasked with designing a venue to rival the opulent opera houses of Paris and Milan, Hungarian architect Miklós Ybl filled it with frescoes depicting Greek gods alongside a 3,000-tonne chandelier, thick marble pillars and vast expanses of gold. Located on UNESCO-listed Andrássy Avenue, the ornate exterior features statues of Hungary’s two most famous composers: Ferenc Erkel, who composed the country's national anthem, and Franz Liszt. If you can bag a place on the guided tours, don’t miss the chance to peek inside the royal box, where sculptures represent the four main operatic voices: soprano, tenor, alto and bass.

Commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III, Paris’s most famous opera house was completed in 1874. Its eye-popping features include the grand staircase, built with multiple types of marble, the horseshoe-shaped auditorium and the 505-foot-long (154m) grand foyer, with its golden pillars and murals depicting key events in the history of music. If you visit, keep an eye out for the rotonde des abonnés – a circular vestibule above the entrance. Look carefully and you’ll see the signature of the building’s designer, Charles Garnier, carved into the stonework, making the opera house the first to bear its architect’s signature.

You’ll struggle to find an opera house with more perfect acoustics than this one, which owes its superior sound to its designers’ attention to detail. For example, hemp, rather than twisted metal fibres (the traditional choice), was used for the ropes which hoist sets into place, and a rare type of acoustics-friendly velvet was used to cover the seats. The downside for performers? The audience’s infamously high expectations, particularly the loggione, the famously vocal opera aficionados who traditionally sit in the venue’s second gallery. In 2006 tenor Roberto Alagna threatened to sue the opera house after storming off stage due to their booing.

Said to be a gift for Alva Vanderbilt after her husband took her to another opera house where views of the stage were less than satisfactory, the original Metropolitan Opera House opened in 1883 and housed the Met, an alternative to the already established Academy of Music. Today, performances are held in a newer, more hi-tech opera house built after the Second World War. With 3,732 seats the current edition is one of the largest in the world, although the pièce de résistance is the auditorium’s ceiling, made with one million sheets of 23-carat gold.

The helmet-shaped Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía is famous for its tech, whether it’s the moveable stages, the interchangeable sets or the automatic translation displayed during performances on screens built into the seats. Opened in 2005 and designed by Santiago Calatrava, a Valencia native, visitors marvel at its curved metallic roof as well as its size (it’s got the third largest orchestra pit in the world).

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London’s Royal Opera House dates back to the 1700s, when the small theatre which stood on the same spot was transformed into a much larger venue. Sadly it was destroyed by fire in 1808, and the new opera house built to replace it suffered the same fate, burning to the ground in 1856. The new building opened in 1892 and the rest, as they say, is history. It’s a venue with multiple claims to fame – in the 1830s, limelight, a mixture of oxygen, quicklime and hydrogen invented by Sir Goldsworthy Gurney a few years before, was used to illuminate performers for the first time, giving us the phrase 'in the limelight'.

One of the oldest opera venues in the world, this Roman amphitheatre was built during the reign of Augustus in AD 30, and the open-air stage has been used specifically for operas since the 15th century. Book an evening performance for an even more spectacular experience, as candles are distributed to guests to make up for the lack of modern lighting. Although several rows of padded seats have been added, we'd argue that the cheapest seats are also the best – right on the original stones.

The first performance at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House, which will celebrate its centennial season next year, was Puccini’s Tosca, performed by Claudia Muzio. The opera house’s opening was big news and the priceless recordings of Muzio’s performance, which was broadcast over the radio, are the only live recordings of this legendary diva. It was America’s first municipally owned opera house, and also hosted the signing of the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco, officially ending conflict between America and Japan after the Second World War.

This Italian opera house opened in 1788 and instantly put itself on the map with the world’s largest horseshoe-shaped auditorium. The numbers were certainly impressive – it could hold 3,000 people, many of whom sat in its 184 boxes. The bad news? A fire in 1816 destroyed large parts of the building, which was damaged again during the Second World War. A pitiful attempt at renovation was carried out afterwards but only in 2010 did it finally receive the TLC it deserved – a £50 million ($59m) makeover which included lashings of the gold-leafed grandeur introduced in the 1700s.

Often dubbed (perhaps unfairly) the world’s ugliest opera house, the enormous Opera Bastille was built in the 1980s. It’s a love/hate building free from the opulence you’ll see in similar venues, and its concrete-heavy interior is often compared to a conference centre. Prior to its construction, then-president François Mitterrand chose a design he believed to be the work of famous architect Richard Meier, but it was actually drawn up by unknown Uruguayan-Canadian architect Carlos Ott. The opera house remains Ott’s most famous (albeit accidental) commission.

Known as 'the egg', this massive performance centre holds a 2,416-seat opera house, a 2,017-seat concert hall and a 1,040-seat theatre all under one roof. It's equally striking inside too – take the concert hall, with its mounted, undulating waves of acoustic panels which resemble an abstract artwork, the swathes of red, purple and orange silk in the theatre or the abundance of Brazilian mahogany used throughout the venue. Even the souvenir shop is impressive – you’ll find it in an underwater hallway.

A whopping 10.9 million people visit the world’s most famous opera house, which has enough room for seven A380s, every year. Construction took more than 14 years (it was supposed to be built in four) and required around 10,000 workers, some of whom were lucky enough to listen to the venue’s first performance in 1960, when singer Paul Robeson climbed the scaffolding and staged an impromptu gig. To say the Sydney Opera House’s construction run over-budget is an understatement: the original estimate was £4 million ($4.75m), and the final cost exceeded £57 million ($68m).

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