Vienna State Opera
Why is it significant?
Stand across the Ring from the Vienna State Opera and let your eyes rest on the open loggia above the entrance, five arches painted with scenes from Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Key Facts
| Place | Vienna State Opera |
|---|---|
| Address | Opernring 2, 1010 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.20330, 16.36920 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna in Three-Quarter Time: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and the City of Music |
| Generated | Generated |
Stand across the Ring from the Vienna State Opera and let your eyes rest on the open loggia above the entrance, five arches painted with scenes from Mozart's The Magic Flute. Every evening this facade fills with people in everything from gowns to jeans, and the standing-room queue snakes along the side.
The house opened on 25 May 1869 with Mozart's Don Giovanni, the first great public building of the Ringstrasse. Its architects, August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, never saw that night. Because the street level was raised after work began, the Viennese mocked the building as a sunken box, and even the emperor let slip a critical remark. Van der Nüll took his own life in 1868, and Sicardsburg died a few weeks later.
The story goes that Franz Joseph was so shaken that for the rest of his life he commented on almost everything with one safe sentence: it was very nice, it pleased me very much. True or not, every Viennese knows the line.
Gustav Mahler ran the house from 1897 to 1907, darkened the auditorium during performances, shut the doors on latecomers and fought the paid applauders of the claque. The orchestra in the pit is the same body of musicians that, in its own concerts, is the Vienna Philharmonic. On 12 March 1945 American bombs set the opera ablaze, and it only reopened on 5 November 1955 with Beethoven's Fidelio, a few months after the treaty that restored Austria's independence.
Before you move on, glance behind the opera to the Hotel Sacher. On that spot stood the old Kärntnertor Theatre, where on 7 May 1824 Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was first performed. Completely deaf, he stood on stage beside the conductor, and the story goes that a young singer turned him around so that he could see the applause he could not hear. Now walk past the Albertina to a small square with a baroque palace.