Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera
Why is it significant?
Take a few steps back across the square to fit it all in: a colonnade of giant columns, a frieze of chariots and gods, and a facade so wide that the people at its feet look like extras in a crowd scene. This is Teatr Wielki, the Grand Theatre, home of the Polish National Opera.
Key Facts
| Place | Teatr Wielki – Polish National Opera |
|---|---|
| Address | Plac Teatralny 1, 00-950 Warszawa, Poland |
| Geo Coordinates | 52.24350, 21.01040 |
| Part of Walk | Chopin's Warsaw: A Walk Through the Composer's Home Town |
| Generated | Generated |
Take a few steps back across the square to fit it all in: a colonnade of giant columns, a frieze of chariots and gods, and a facade so wide that the people at its feet look like extras in a crowd scene. This is Teatr Wielki, the Grand Theatre, home of the Polish National Opera.
It was designed by Antonio Corazzi, the Italian architect behind the Staszic Palace you passed at the start, and it opened in 1833 with Rossini's The Barber of Seville. Chopin never saw it finished. His own Warsaw concerts, including his farewell concert in October 1830, took place in the older National Theatre a few streets north. But the music of his generation filled this house within a few years of his leaving.
One of the bronze figures in front of the theatre is Stanisław Moniuszko, the father of Polish national opera. His Halka, the tragedy of a mountain girl betrayed by a nobleman, had its Warsaw premiere in its full four-act version here on the first of January 1858. Where Chopin carried Polish music into the salons of Paris, Moniuszko put it on a Warsaw stage, in Polish, with mazurkas and polonaises danced by the whole company.
In September 1939, during the German siege of Warsaw, the theatre burned, and only the front survived. Behind Corazzi's columns, the architect Bohdan Pniewski built an almost entirely new house, which reopened in 1965 with one of the largest stages in Europe. The National Theatre itself, founded in 1765, now lives in the east wing of the same building.
Southward lies Piłsudski Square. The arcade there, with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, is all that remains of the Saxon Palace, blown up by the Germans in 1944, and in that palace the Chopin family had their very first Warsaw home, from 1810 to 1817. Cross the square, pass the arcade and the Saxon Garden behind it, and continue down Królewska street to the round church with the great dome.