Opera House lights dimmed in tribute to the Great Dane

Sydney

Flags were flown at half mast. Politicians paid their tributes. Obituaries appeared. A condolence book was brought out. But the final touch was the most poignant - the lights on the scalloped roof of the Sydney Opera House were dimmed to mark his passing.

Joern Utzon was not one of Sydney's grandees. He was not a prime minister, a soldier or a sporting hero. He was not even an Australian citizen, but a gifted, if flawed, Danish architect, who left these shores 42 years ago, amid public controversy over budget blowouts and his artistic vision for the Opera House, and never returned to see its completion.

Utzon's death at 90 last weekend, at his home outside Copenhagen after a short illness, has generated a heartfelt and often agonised response from Sydneysiders, normally a phlegmatic lot.

'Joern Utzon was a giant among men,' wrote Catherine Reynolds, of Leichhardt, in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald. 'He gave Sydney an utterly beautiful and unique building that transformed our nation.'

The general mood of sadness was no doubt compounded by the recent death of Richard Hickox, 60, the musical director of Opera Australia, the company synonymous with the ethereal building overlooking Sydney Harbour; the iconic roofline has variously been compared to the sails of a yacht, the slices of an orange or a group of copulating turtles.

Despite the passage of time, many people still have treasured memories of Utzon, a handsome Dane who brought a touch of cosmopolitan style to staid post-war Sydney. His former secretary, Shirley Colless, calls him a man 'of grace, charm, dignity and humour' who was shabbily treated by the government of the day.