Thank you for sharing your wonderful experience at Hamer Hall in Sydney. It will definitely be one of the destinations on our list in the hopefully near future
I had to look up Hamer Hall! It is the new name for the Melbourne Concert Hall and seats just under 2,500 people. I was lucky enough to go to the opening concert season, which was Saint Saens opera Sampson and Delila. At the time I was working in Tasmania and commuting from Melbourne, which had a pretty stuffy reputation, compared with racy Sydney. I had no idea the performance was controversial until the Act 3 Bacchanale when most of the cast stripped naked and slowly formed a giant human pyramid. And this was the grand opening of Melbourne's new concert venue, built to rival the Sydney Opera House.
My favourite performance is from Copenhagen.and controversially had two directors, one from Israel and one from Palestine. They also swapped the storyline so the Palestinians were persecuted by the Israelis. This would be my most powerful argument against streaming - I have the physical silver disc but I cannot find the performance anywhere else.
The Sydney Opera House has two major performing venues, one for concerts and one for opera. They were also swapped over early in construction, and the bigger became the Concert Hall which has just had a major refurbishment. The smaller space is a bit small for opera, so in summer we have the Handa Opera performing on a temporary stage floating on Sydney Harbour with views of the actual Opera House. Sits twice as many people so commercially viable. Lots of DVDs have been made of these Handa productions ... Handa season is about six weeks so try and time your visit!