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Vienna State Opera
Vienna and surrounding
Culture, Traditions, Folklore
Culture, Traditions, Folklore

Vienna State Opera is a dream of Opera lovers from all over the world. It is the largest Opera house in the whole country as well as a center of the musical culture of Austria. Every performance in Vienna State Opera is sold out.

Vienna is a very musical city in itself. There worked such great composers as Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Haydn, Brahms and Gluck, Johann Strauss and his three sons Johann, Joseph and Eduard.

The Austrian architect August Sicard von Sicardsburg could not imagine the city without its own Opera house. So he designed the building of the State Opera for the capital of his homeland. Interiors were designed by Eduard van der Null.

The first whose works were honored to be performed on the Opera stage was opera "Don Giovanni" by Mozart. However, the first performance did not please Emperor Franz Joseph. This circumstance upset the architect and interior designer so much that the interior designer decided to commit suicide, and the architect went to a hospital with a heart attack!

Today, we would hardly be able to understand what the Emperor was dissatisfied with, because the building of the Vienna Opera can be considered one of the most beautiful in the city, and indeed, in all of Europe! This is proved for example by the sculptures of Ernst Haenel installed on the facade, depicting the five muses: Grace, Love, Heroics, Comedy and Fantasy.

Since the time of the ancient Greeks, these muses represented five trends in art. As much as we would like to see the originals of these sculptures, we, unfortunately, have to settle for copies. During the Second world war, the building was destroyed due to bombing. And only the survived drawings helped restore this magnificent example of architecture.

Countless works by the world's greatest composers were on this stage. Under the direction of Herbert von Karajan, it became a tradition to organize free concerts on the square in front of the Opera house. By the way, the tradition is still alive and about 120 concerts are given annually.

There are 1 313 seats in the auditorium of the Vienna State Opera. All of them are equipped with small screens on the back of the chair in front of them, with a translation of the libretto in three languages (German, English and French). For tourists who do not like the Opera, but would like to see the interior of the building, regular excursions are held in English. Also, there is an opportunity to visit the Vienna Opera Ball that is held every year at the end of February.

Address: Wiener Staatsoper, Opernring 2

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