Margravial Opera House

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Margravial Opera House Bayreuth
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem
Bayreuth, Markgr Opernh 1995.jpg
Margravial Opera House, 1995
National territory: GermanyGermany Germany
Type: Culture
Criteria : (i) (iv)
Reference No .: 1379
UNESCO region : Europe and North America
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 2012  (session 36)
Facade of the opera house, 2007
Interior with box tiers , 1879 (painting by Gustav Bauernfeind )
Royal box

The Margrave Opera House in the Upper Franconian city of Bayreuth is a theater of the 18th century . Since Bayreuth had become an insignificant provincial town after the margravial period towards the end of the 18th century, the building was able to survive the following period almost unchanged. Thanks to the artistic quality and the state of preservation, the Margravial Opera House is one of the two most important theater buildings built before the French Revolution that has been preserved, along with the Teatro Olimpico . On June 30, 2012, UNESCO made the baroque building a World Heritage Site .

In Bayreuth it is only called the “Opera House”, whereas the opera house built by Richard Wagner is called the “Festspielhaus”. After the principality of Bayreuth was sold to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810, the building was called the “Royal Opera House”.

prehistory

In 1714, Margrave Georg Wilhelm had a Redoutenhaus built on what is now Münzgasse, and an “Opera House” next to it. The synagogue was built in 1759 on the site of the first Redoutenhaus - four years later the current one was built at the confluence of Münzgasse and Opernstrasse . The arcades of the box house of the old opera were still recognizable on the synagogue wall in 1946. The stage house was located between the old and the new Redoutenhaus, right next to today's opera house. However, this building did not meet the demands of Margravine Wilhelmine (from 1735 she ruled the Principality of Bayreuth with her husband Friedrich ).

Building history

The Margravial Opera House was built between 1744 and 1750 and is one of the few original theaters and operas of the time in Europe. At that time it was intended to convey the beginning of an age of wisdom and peace to visitors, which was initiated under the margrave couple Friedrich and Wilhelmine.

The building was designed by Joseph Saint-Pierre , the interior of the house was designed by Giuseppe and Carlo Galli da Bibiena in the style of the Italian late baroque . Only the original stage curtain is missing - it was stolen by the troops of Napoleon , who moved through Bayreuth to Russia in May 1812.

The box theater is made entirely of wood. The three box tiers are assigned to the three social classes. What is remarkable, however, is the fact that the royal box was almost never used by the margrave couple. In the middle of the first row were golden armchairs from which the action on the stage could be observed from a short distance.

The ceiling painting Apollo and the nine muses was created by Johann Benjamin Müller from Dresden. Mythological scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses are depicted in the round pictures on the ceiling framing .

  • The margravial coat of arms above the stage

  • Box for fanfare players

  • The three floors with spectator boxes

The roof construction, which is probably the work of the court carpenter Adolf Adam Feulner and the largest of its kind, is remarkable. The consultant organization ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) of UNESCO considered the roof to be particularly valuable and classified it as part of the world heritage.

With a span of 25 meters, the column-free roof is at the limit of the possible construction length. The wood for the roof structure was probably felled in the winter of 1746/47 in the chief foresters' offices in Kulmbach and Sankt Johannis , the forestry authorities in Creußen , Lindenhardt and Röhrenhof and in the Himmelcron forestry department . After the outer walls had been raised, the courtyard carpenters had to erect the roof as quickly as possible so that Bibiena could do the interior work in the dry. The not perfectly rectangular property forced the concealment of irregularities and made it difficult to erect a roof structure with a straight ridge. In order to compensate for the different widths of the house from front to back - the roof is offset by up to 40 centimeters - Feulner built four roof trusses according to the same principle and connected them together.

The rafted wood was installed damp. In order to finish more quickly, Feulner had two phases of erecting the roof run parallel to one another: one coming from the stage towards the center of the building, the other from the front. Bibiena did not come to Bayreuth to install the lodge house until 1747, when the roof structure was in place and the building site was dry. At the opening, the street facade had a straight end. The hipped roof on the street side was not built until 1750 when the vestibule was added .

history

The opera house was inaugurated at the end of September 1748 on the occasion of the marriage of the daughter of the margrave couple, Elisabeth Friederike Sophie von Brandenburg-Bayreuth , to Duke Carl Eugen from Württemberg . The facade was not yet finished when it opened . The Italian operas Artaserse and Ezio by the composer Johann Adolph Hasse were performed at a splendid festival . The construction of the building, for which the margravial subjects ultimately had to pay , plunged the Principality of Bayreuth into a debt crisis.

Redoutenhaus (left) and Margravial Opera House around 1900

Margravine Wilhelmine, a sister of Frederick the Great , died ten years after the inauguration. She was a gifted composer and librettist of operas and musical plays that were performed in Bayreuth. During her opera leadership, which lasted around 20 years (from 1737), she gave her music theater a personal and independent face, which culminated in the construction of the Margravial Opera House. After her death, regular theater operations were reduced, and after the death of Margrave Friedrich five years later (1763) it was temporarily stopped. Historians see this as a reason why this wooden opera house did not fall victim to a fire like the others of its time. Candles or lights, which could have caused a fire, were lit less often there.

Margravial riding hall, the entrance to the theater on the long side, early 20th century

From then on, Bayreuth no longer had its own ensembles ; the costs and repertoires corresponded to what was provincially possible. In 1769, a traveling group moved into the building for the first time . Minna von Barnhelm , Romeo and Juliet and - now in German - Molières The Miser were on the program at that time. Cabal and love with the report of soldiers sent to America reopened presumably festering wounds in the population in the late 1780s. Margrave Karl Alexander had forced more than 2,300 men from his Bayreuth and Ansbach territories into military service in the Thirteen Colonies in 1777 under threat of standing death sentences , only 1379 returned. At that time, around 10,000 people lived in the city, and the opera house was too big for the modest demands of the citizens and could not be heated. Therefore, from 1785 onwards, people often switched to a smaller, heated theater that was built in the margravial riding hall in 1762 .

In 1794 Mozart's Magic Flute was heard for the first time in the opera house , but the “audience hits” were operettas and singspiel . The singers were often only actors with untrained natural voices, the orchestra also came from the theater troupe and town musicians brought in to reinforce it . Preferred authors in the drama were Kotzebue and Iffland , numerous antics producers performed funny things like Die Schöne Bayreutherin in Vienna . In the years 1792/93 Franz Anton Weber performed with his troupe, including his son Carl Maria , in the Margravial Opera House. During the time of the French occupation from 1806, the game operations were stopped.

After Bayreuth was sold by Napoleon Bonaparte to the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1810 , the opera house was administered by Bavarian officials who did not only use the house for cultural purposes. "There is no decent place to dry the flour for the army magazine, and the opera house has to be used for 14 days" reads a government letter from 1814. During the war, the building was primarily a resource for military use, and its condition deteriorated. A report by the Bavarian building authorities pointed out: “The slate roof of the Royal Opera House is in poor condition. Rainwater penetrates through the casing and forms entire pools on the ground floor, which can then be seen for days. "

Margravial Opera House around 1910

Guest performance took on more stable forms in the 19th century. The opera house was regularly played by the fixed stages in the neighboring cities of Coburg , Nuremberg and Bamberg , although the topicality was not ignored. Pieces by the fallen national hero Theodor Körner and Kleist's Käthchen von Heilbronn were performed, and the opera house, which was at risk of fire , was even used for the pyrotechnic exhibition The Fire in Moscow . In 1822 - just one year after the premiere - Carl Maria von Weber's Freischütz was greeted with storms of applause . Beethoven's only opera Fidelio was on the program in 1834. There were also classical spoken theater performances in the 19th century. In the second half of the 19th century, a “court theater ensemble” put together for the respective season played operettas in the opera house . Stars of the emerging entertainment industry also came there. Magicians, acrobats and athletes appeared, trained monkeys showed their tricks. The margravial opera house was used as an everyday venue until the 1930s, before the former margravial riding hall (from 1965: town hall), which was converted by the National Socialists , took over this function.

The Margravial Opera House was also an attraction for the composer Richard Wagner , choosing Bayreuth as the location for the festival . On June 30, 1860, there was a performance of his opera Tannhäuser by the Coburg Court Opera in the presence of the Bavarian King Maximilian II . This was the climax of a three-day anniversary celebration on the occasion of Bayreuth's 50th anniversary of Bavaria and the first performance of a Wagner opera in the city. During the visit of the “fairytale king” Ludwig II in November 1866, samples from Tannhäuser and Lohengrin were played in the building, which was first lit with gas .

Wagner, who had already come through Bayreuth once in 1836, became aware of the stage, which was unusually large for the time, through a conversation lexicon around 1870. During his first stay in the city in April 1871, however, he found the size and shape of the auditorium unsuitable for his purposes. Nevertheless, he stayed at Bayreuth as a festival venue and decided to build his own theater there. To celebrate the laying of the foundation stone of the Festspielhaus , Wagner conducted Beethoven's 9th Symphony in the Margravial Opera House on May 22, 1872 . In preparation for the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, he used the Margravial Opera House as an alternative rehearsal site with the approval of the royal authorities.

Margravial Opera House, 2019

After the Second World War, the building was initially confiscated by the US military government and was only released again in June 1947. The Mozart Festival Weeks already took place in August of the same year: The program included Figaro's wedding and Così fan tutte . In addition to a total of 24 opera performances, there were some festival and chamber concerts. Since 1948 there has been the event series Fränkische Festwoche with guest performances from Munich stages instead .

At the beginning of the 1950s, the opera house was the location for the films prisoner soul , portrait of a stranger , a trip on the Moselle from lovesickness and women around Richard Wagner . Scenes from the film Only Few are selected from 1960 and the television series Wagner - The Life and Work of Richard Wagner from 1983 were created in the building. In 1994 the Belgian director Gérard Corbiau shot a part of the scenes in Bayreuth for the film Farinelli, the castrato about the life story of the Italian baroque singer Carlo Broschi, known as Farinelli .

In the place of today's upper balcony room there was an apartment in which the castellan lived with his family. It was used until 1968.

Under the title The Margravial Opera House and the Bayreuth of Margravine Wilhelmine - The Ideal World of a Woman between Absolutism and Enlightenment , the Bavarian Palace Administration, in cooperation with the city of Bayreuth, successfully applied for recognition of the opera house and the other original architectural evidence of the Margravine Wilhelmine in Bayreuth ( Hermitage , New Castle and Sanspareil ) as a UNESCO World Heritage site. On June 30, 2012, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee made a positive decision on the application for the opera house.

Back of the Margravial Opera House in 2019; on the left in the background the castle tower , directly on the right the synagogue

The house has been closed since September 2012 and has been completely renovated. The stage opening was brought back to its original size. Due to water damage in November 2014 as a result of a defective water pipe, the renovation took until April 2018. The costs are expected to have increased by 1.8 million euros to a total of 29.3 million euros. On April 12, 2018, the Margravial Opera House was reopened after five years of construction with a performance of the opera Artaserse , which was also performed at the opening in 1748.

museum

Opernstraße with Redoutenhaus (left) and Margravial Opera House, 2012

In the New Palace , some rooms are dedicated to the theaters of Margravine Wilhelmine and the Galli-Bibiena family of architects. It houses u. a. a model of the opera house in its original state, d. H. before downsizing the stage portal, which had become necessary due to the installation of the iron curtain.

In September 2018 it was announced that a World Heritage Center and an Opera House Museum, which would introduce visitors to the opera world of Margravine Wilhelmine, would be set up in the neighboring Redoutenhaus . In the course of a general renovation of the building, a barrier-free entrance and cash desk area for the opera house is to be created there.

Events

Others

250 Years of the Bayreuth Opera House stamp from 1998
  • Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder : "An opera house that is almost as big as the Berlin opera house and is called one of the largest and most magnificent opera houses in the world."
  • In 1998, Deutsche Post issued a special postage stamp entitled “250 Years of the Bayreuth Opera House”

literature

Web links

Commons : Margravial Opera House  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Peter O. Krückmann: The Bayreuth of the Margravine Wilhelmine . Prestel, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7913-1905-1 , p. 7 .
  2. ↑ Bayreuther Zeitung of March 4, 1849 at books.google.de, accessed on February 10, 2020
  3. ↑ Royal Opera House in Bayreuth at gda.bayern.de, accessed on February 10, 2020
  4. ↑ Beneficial Neighborhood in: Nordbayerischer Kurier, May 28, 2018, p. 14.
  5. ^ Rainer Trübsbach : History of the City of Bayreuth. 1194-1994 . Druckhaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth 1993, ISBN 3-922808-35-2 , p. 99 .
  6. ↑ Bernd Mayer : Little Bayreuth City History . Friedrich Pustet, Regensburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-7917-2266-5 , pp. 75 f .
  7. ↑ Miracle made of coniferous wood in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from June 11, 2018, p. 14.
  8. ↑ They used to do things! in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of April 12, 2018, p. 23.
  9. ^ Raise the curtain in the Margravial Opera House in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from April 11, 2018, p. 16.
  10. ↑ Curtain up! in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of April 12, 2018, p. 1.
  11. ↑ Kurt Herterich : From Bayreuth Castle Tower to Festival Hill , p. 26.
  12. ^ A b c d Wilhelm Rauh, Erich Rappl: Stage Bayreuth . Druckhaus Bayreuth, Bayreuth 1987, ISBN 3-922808-21-2 , p. 38 .
  13. ↑ Karl Müssel: Bayreuth in eight centuries . 1st edition. Gondrom, Bindlach 1993, ISBN 3-8112-0809-8 , p. 120 .
  14. ↑ Karl Müssel: Bayreuth in eight centuries , S. 139th
  15. ↑ a b c Affentheater im Opernhaus in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of March 12, 2018, p. 16.
  16. ^ W. Bronnenmeyer: Richard Wagner. Citizens in Bayreuth . Ellwanger, Bayreuth 1983, p. 31 .
  17. ^ A b W. Bronnenmeyer: Richard Wagner. Citizens in Bayreuth , p. 32.
  18. ↑ Bernd Mayer: Bayreuth as it was. Flash lights from the city's history 1850–1950 . 2nd Edition. Gondrom, Bayreuth 1981, p. 17 .
  19. ↑ Bernd Mayer: Bayreuth as it was , p. 25.
  20. ^ W. Bronnenmeyer: Richard Wagner. Citizens in Bayreuth , p. 45.
  21. ^ W. Bronnenmeyer: Richard Wagner. Citizens in Bayreuth , p. 109.
  22. ↑ Bernd Mayer: Mozart Festival in the Wagner City. In: Heimat-Kurier. No. 3/2007
  23. ↑ Sometimes grotesque, sometimes charming in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of April 9, 2018, p. 16.
  24. ^ "Farinelli" shot in the opera house in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from 16./17. March 2019, p. 12.
  25. ↑ The world heritage as living room in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from 21./22. July 2018, p. 16.
  26. ↑ Margravial Opera House. Status of the UNESCO procedure - final steps on the way to becoming a World Heritage Site ( Bavarian Administration of State Palaces, Gardens and Lakes / Bayreuth-Hermitage Palace and Gardens Administration ). on: bayreuth-wilhelmine.de Accessed March 5, 2011.
  27. ↑ @unesco "Just inscribed on the UNESCO #WorldHeritage list: Germany: Margravial Opera House Bayreuth"
  28. ^ UNESCO World Heritage Site Margravial Opera House Bayreuth. on: bayreuth.de , accessed on December 22, 2015.
  29. ↑ Margravial Opera House Bayreuth: Water damage costs 1.8 million euros , accessed on May 26, 2016.
  30. ↑ How the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth should shine again , accessed on May 26, 2016.
  31. ↑ As once with Wilhelmine in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of May 30, 2017, p. 9.
  32. ↑ Margravial Opera House Bayreuth will reopen ( Memento from June 16, 2018 in the Internet Archive ), br.de, April 12, 2018
  33. ↑ Manuel Brug: Bayreuth has its most beautiful temple back. Die Welt, April 14, 2018, accessed April 16, 2018 .
  34. ↑ Margravial Opera House Bayreuth reopened in new splendor. Deutsche Welle, April 12, 2018, accessed April 16, 2018 .
  35. ^ Peter O. Krückmann: The Bayreuth of the Margravine Wilhelmine today. In: Archive for the history of Upper Franconia. 81st volume. Bayreuth 2001, p. 245.
  36. ↑ The World Heritage Center comes in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from September 21, 2018, p. 11.
  37. ^ Wilhelm Heinrich Wackenroder : Whitsun trip with Tieck , 1793

Coordinates: 49 ° 56 ′ 39.9 ″  N , 11 ° 34 ′ 42.5 ″  E