Theater an der Wien & the Papageno Gate
Why is it significant?
Walk round the side of the Theater an der Wien to its old stage door and find, above it, a man in a costume of feathers surrounded by three small boys. This is the Papageno Gate, and the feathered man is Emanuel Schikaneder dressed as Papageno, the bird catcher from Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Key Facts
| Place | Theater an der Wien & the Papageno Gate |
|---|---|
| Address | Linke Wienzeile 6, 1060 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.19980, 16.36390 |
| Part of Walk | Vienna in Three-Quarter Time: Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss and the City of Music |
| Generated | Generated |
Walk round the side of the Theater an der Wien to its old stage door and find, above it, a man in a costume of feathers surrounded by three small boys. This is the Papageno Gate, and the feathered man is Emanuel Schikaneder dressed as Papageno, the bird catcher from Mozart's The Magic Flute.
Schikaneder was an actor, singer, impresario and the man who wrote the words of The Magic Flute. In 1791 the opera premiered in his modest suburban theatre a short walk from here, with Schikaneder himself singing Papageno, and its long success helped him build this much grander house, which opened in 1801. He put himself, in feathers, over the door. Not a modest man.
For a while Beethoven was composer in residence, and around 1803 he even lived in the building. His only opera, Fidelio, was first performed here on 20 November 1805... one week after Napoleon's army had marched into Vienna. Much of the Viennese nobility had fled, the hall was full of French officers who did not follow the German words, and the opera flopped. Beethoven revised it twice before it became the freedom hymn we know.
Three years later, on 22 December 1808, he hired the theatre for a monster concert: the premieres of his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the public premiere of the Fourth Piano Concerto, the Choral Fantasy and more, about four hours of music in a freezing hall. The orchestra was under-rehearsed, and the Choral Fantasy fell apart and had to be started again. Some of the most famous music ever written was born in chaos.
The same stage later launched Johann Strauss's Die Fledermaus in 1874 and Franz Lehár's The Merry Widow in 1905, so one building holds the birth of Beethoven's great opera of liberty and of Viennese operetta at its most champagne-soaked. Now walk north-east along the Friedrichstrasse, past the white Secession with its dome of golden leaves, and on towards the Ring, where the great rear of the State Opera rises above the traffic.