Vienna State Opera house, Opera house in Innere Stadt, Vienna, Austria.
Vienna State Opera is a Renaissance Revival opera house on Vienna's Ring Road, the first major building on the boulevard. Its light beige facade has five arched entrance porches, five arched windows with interior statues, and two bronze equestrian statues on the roofline. The auditorium seats 1,709 under a deep-red ceiling, with cream walls and stacked red-draped boxes.
Built from 1861 to 1869 to plans by August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll, the house opened as the Vienna Court Opera on 25 May 1869 with Mozart's Don Giovanni, Emperor Franz Joseph I and Empress Elisabeth present. On 12 March 1945 an American bombardment set it alight, destroying the auditorium, stage and décor of more than 120 operas; the front section with Moritz von Schwind's foyer frescoes survived. Erich Boltenstern's 1950s reconstruction, using wood for acoustics, reopened the house.
The Vienna Philharmonic recruits its members from the opera orchestra, and the Vienna State Ballet is also based here. During carnival season the building hosts the Vienna Opera Ball, when the auditorium floor is raised level with the stage. The house is named after the First Austrian Republic, which gave the former Court Opera its current title in 1921.
The auditorium is reached through the five arched entrance porches of the Ringstrasse facade, with the main stairways and vestibule in the front section that survived the 1945 fire. The parterre holds fewer seats than before the war, and the fourth gallery was rebuilt without columns. The house seats 1,709 in total.
The auditorium rebuilt after 1945 by Erich Boltenstern has no columns in the fourth gallery, and wood was chosen for the acoustics on advice that included Arturo Toscanini. The parterre holds fewer seats than before the war.
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