Sydney Opera House(1957-1973)is a masterpiece of late modern architecture. It is admired internationally and    1    treasured by the people of Australia. It was created by a young architect who understood and    2    the potential provided by the site against the backdrop of Sydney Harbour. Denmark's Jorn Utzon gave Australia a graceful piece of urban sculpture in patterned tiles, glistening in the sunlight.

In its short lifetime, Sydney Opera House has earned a(n)    3    as a world-class performing arts centre and become a(n)    4    of both Sydney and the Australian nation.

Sydney Opera House was enrolled in the World Heritage(世界遗产)List in June 2007:”Sydney Opera House is a great architectural work of the 20th century. It    5    multiple strands of creativity, both in architectural form and structural design, a great urban sculpture    6    set in a remarkable waterscape and a world-famous iconic building.”

Its    7    roof consists of sets of “shells” set upon a vast platform and surrounded by terrace areas that function as pedestrian concourses. The two main halls are    8    side by side, with their long axes, slightly inclined from each other, generally running north-south. The auditoria face south, away from the harbour with the stages located between the audience and the city. The Forecourt is a vast open space from which people go up the stairs to the podium. The Monumental Steps, which lead up from the Forecourt to the two main performance venues, are a great ceremonial stairway nearly 100 metres wide.

In 1999,Jorn Utzon was re-engaged as Sydney Opera House    9    to develop a set of design principles to act as a guide for all future changes to the building. These principles reflect his    10    vision and help to ensure that the building's architectural integrity is maintained.

The Paris Opera House is one of the extraordinary buildings in the world. It contains levels beyond levels of cellars, fountains, chandeliers and even its own ghost! The history of this performance hall is dark and interesting, and its mysterious quality is perfectly    1    in architecture, literature and music.

The House seats two thousand and has seventeen stories, taking up three acres of land. Seven of these are    2    the ground, and two contain pieces of the famous lake later pictured in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera. Part of the    3    of the opera house is the levels that it inhabits underground. There are chorus rooms, green rooms, ball rooms, set rooms, cellars for waste props, closets, dressing rooms, and many more kinds of rooms making up the building. The underground levels contain all sorts of unpleasant and horrible objects from various operas that have been produced. Their    4    effect sparked the idea behind Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera. The lake on the last floor was accidentally sprung when a worker knocked against a pipe underground.

The Phantom of the Opera, later    5    into an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, was a book based upon the opera house. It portrays a young singer, Christine, and the Phantom who    6    in love with her, Erik. Other characters include Meg, a young dancer, and Raoul, the lover that goes to Christine's    7    and eventually wins her heart. In Leroux's tale, the Phantom, a mysterious    8    underground, kills, injures and frightens members of the cast before the audience and the cast in turn chase him down and drive him away from the theater. In the    9    story, the Phantom commits suicide by    10    himself because he fails to win Christine's love.

Work on this House began in 1861 and ended, fifteen years later. , It cost over forty-seven million francs, and gave its creator and workers a big headache.