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Exterior view
Looking at the building from the Opernring, in other words from the front, the historical part from the original 1869 building is visible. The façade remains in Renaissance arched style and the loggia on the Ringstrasse side underline the public character of the building.
Fountains
Right and left of the house two old fountains by Josef Gasser can be seen. They represent opposing worlds. Left: Music, Dance, Joy, and Lightheartedness, Right: Loreley, Grief, Love, and Revenge.
The Building
The back part of the two part building is clearly wider and houses the stage and the accompanying facilities while the narrower front part houses the auditorium and
the publicly accessible rooms. Worth noting are the differing roof shapes: the vaulted roof all around over the higher central parts of the building covering the auditorium
and the stage, the Walm roof on the lateral wings, the Saddle roof on the two-storey links between the lateral wings and the French roof on the corner turrets.
The vertical wing sections were originally used as carriage ramps. On the transverse front sides the crest of the Austrian-Hungarian empire can be seen.
Interior of the former opera house
Entering through one of the main doors into the box office foyer, which has remained in its original form, gives an immediate impression of the interior of the former opera house which was mostly destroyed on the 12th of March 1945 shortly before the end of hostilities in the Second World War. Remaining in its original form is the entire façade and main foyer, the central stairway (known as the ‘celebratory stairway’), the Schwindfoyer and loggia as well as the Tea Salon on the first floor.
Vienna State Opera History
The tradition of Viennese opera goes back over three and a half centuries to the time of the early Baroque. Emperor Franz Joseph I decreed in December 1857
that the old city walls and fortifications around the Viennese inner city should be torn down and the Ringstrasse, a wide boulevard with new
purpose built buildings for culture and politics, should take its place. Also the two Court theatres (one drama and one music theatre) were
to find a new home on the Ring. For the Court opera theatre a prominent place was chosen in the immediate area of the former Kärtnertortheater.
This popular opera theatre built in 1709 was torn down due to its being too cramped.
In its place a new opera house was built designed by the Viennese architect August von Sicardsburg with interior decoration
conceived by Eduard van der Nüll. But other well known artists also made contributions: one has only to think of Moritz von
Schwind who painted the frescos in the foyer and the well-known Magic Flute cycle in the loggia. The two architects would not
live to see the opening of ‘their’ opera house: the sensitive van der Nüll committed suicide after the Viennese characterized his
house as tasteless and his friend Sicardsburg died shortly afterwards from a stroke.
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