Zurich Opera House

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Zurich Opera House
Zurich Opera House at night

The Zurich Opera House is located in the center of the city of Zurich at Sechseläutenplatz . Until 1964 the building was called the City Theater , since then the Opera House ; it was opened on October 1, 1891 and can accommodate 1,100 people. The Zurich Opera House has been headed by director Andreas Homoki since 2012 , who succeeded Alexander Pereira .

history

The remains of the Aktientheater after the fire of 1890
Registered shares for 200 old Zurich guilders of the Theater-Actiengesellschaft Zurich from May 1, 1891 to finance the new building
The city theater around 1893

Zurich's first big theater was founded by the Theater-Aktiengesellschaft Zurich and opened on 10 November 1834 share theater with 800 seats in the converted church of the former Barfüsserklosters on Hirschengraben . This was the first time that the city had a permanent venue for traveling theater groups. After the heyday under the direction of Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer (1837–1843) and during Richard Wagner's stay in Zurich , who conducted and staged foreign and own works between 1849 and 1855, the house burned down completely on the New Year's Eve of 1889/1890.

According to plans by the Viennese architects Fellner und Helmer , who are experienced in theater construction, today's building, which was originally planned for Krakow and was already ready for construction, was erected in a short time. Today the building is listed in the cantonal inventory for monument preservation. It is largely identical to the Croatian National Theater in Zagreb (1894) and the Court Theater in Wiesbaden, built in 1892/1894, today the Hessian State Theater in Wiesbaden . It was inaugurated on September 30, 1891 and opened the following day with a performance of Wagner's Lohengrin . In the early days it served as a music and spoken theater, but after the construction of the theater in 1926 it concentrated on opera , operetta and ballet .

The history of the Zurich Opera House is rich in highlights: for example, Wilhelm Furtwängler's career began here and in 1913 Richard Wagner's Parsifal was first performed outside of Bayreuth . Composers such as Ferruccio Busoni , Paul Hindemith , Richard Strauss , Othmar Schoeck , Arthur Honegger and Frank Martin influenced Zurich's musical and theater life. Numerous first and world premieres took place at the Zurich Opera House. Alban Berg's Lulu , Paul Hindemith's Mathis der Maler , Arnold Schönberg's Moses and Aron were performed here for the first time, as were works by Heinrich Sutermeister , Giselher Klebe and Rudolf Kelterborn .

The contribution of 60 million francs approved by the Zurich city council in 1980 for the renovation of the opera house and the extension on Uto-Quai was the trigger for the youth riots in Switzerland from 1980–1982, which went down in history as opera house riots. 1982 to 1984 the house was rebuilt, expanded and renovated; Since then, the Bernhard Theater has been housed in a modern extension . In December 1984 the house was opened with Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the world premiere of Kelterborn's opera based on Anton Chekhov's Der Kirschgarten .

Well-known singers such as Sári Barabás , Lisa della Casa , Kirsten Flagstad , Reri Grist , Mirella Freni , Tito Gobbi , Alfredo Kraus , James McCracken , Nikolaj Gjaurow and Wolfgang Windgassen have performed here in the past . Agnes Baltsa , Edita Gruberová , Cecilia Bartoli , Vesselina Kasarova , Anja Silja , Elena Moșuc , Francisco Araiza , Renato Bruson , Thomas Hampson , Alfred Muff , Leo Nucci , Ruggero Raimondi , Matti Salminen and Neil Shicoff were members of the ensemble. The ensemble currently includes Julie Fuchs , Rachel Harnisch , Marina Rebeka , Pavol Breslik , Ruben Drole and Mauro Peter .

In addition to musical theater and ballet performances, the Zurich Opera House regularly organizes philharmonic concerts, matinees, recitals , productions on the studio stage, performances for children and jazz concerts . Every year in March, the Opera Ball takes place, which is attended by celebrities from the entertainment, business, sport and politics. Since September 2012, every season has been opened with an open house, and an opera performance for everyone is broadcast live on a screen on Sechseläutenplatz every season (for the first time in June 2014).

In April 2014 the Zurich Opera House was named Opera Company of the Year at the International Opera Awards .

Directors

Opera house auditorium
Opera house staircase
  • 1883–1896: Paul Schroetter
  • 1901–1921: Alfred Reucker
  • 1921–1932: Paul Trede
  • 1932–1947: Karl Schmid-Bloß
  • 1947–1956: Hans Zimmermann
  • 1956–1960: Karl-Heinz Krahl
  • 1960–1962: Herbert Graf
  • 1962–1964: Interim management collective consisting of Emil Jucker, Werner Meyer and Christian Vöchting
  • 1964–1975: Hermann Juch
  • 1975–1986: Claus Helmut Drese
    Drese achieved international recognition for the Zurich Opera House primarily through the Monteverdi cycle with Nikolaus Harnoncourt as musical director and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle as director and set designer. With this cycle, the opera house was a guest on numerous international stages. The realization of the Zurich Mozart cycle was later assigned to the same team.
  • 1987–1991: Christoph Groszer , previously artistic director in Wiesbaden.
    The Mozart cycle came to an end under Groszer. From 1987 to 1989 he brought out Wagner's tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen .
  • 1991–2012: Alexander Pereira , former General Secretary of the Wiener Konzerthaus . He opened his first season with Lohengrin, with which the city theater had been inaugurated 100 years earlier, in a production by Robert Wilson .
    From the beginning, Pereira attached great importance to developing an ensemble. He also attached great importance to the promotion of young performers, open forms of events and the involvement of the public as well as cooperation with well-known artists. International opera stars were regular guests in Zurich and complemented the ensemble for several weeks.
    The maintenance of the operatic repertoire from Claudio Monteverdi to Richard Strauss was at the center of Pereira's repertoire .
Hall of Mirrors Opera House
Entrance foyer opera house

He also paid attention to contemporary music, as the list of world premieres in recent years shows.
In addition, unknown works keep appearing on the repertoire, such as Joseph Haydn's L'anima del filosofo, Salieris Axur , Schubert's Des Teufels Lustschloß and Fierrabras , Umberto Giordano's La cena delle beffe, Paul Dukas ' Ariane et Barbe-Bleue or those for over a hundred Years ago, the operetta Simplicius by Johann Strauss could no longer be reconstructed .
Pereira was committed to the youth work of the Zurich Opera House and to the presence of Zurich opera productions on the DVD market.
Thanks not least to Pereira, the opera house was cantonalized in the spring of 1995. In addition, from autumn 1996 he was artistic director and member of the artistic committee of the Zurich Festival , which he had largely initiated and which was held for the first time in summer 1997. Here and there Pereira appeared as an actor in a supporting role, most recently in Ariadne auf Naxos . In 2012 Pereira switched to the Salzburg Festival .

Conductors

From 1969 to 1983 Ferdinand Leitner was the musical director of the opera house, followed by Ralf Weikert until 1992 . Other conductors to be mentioned are Nello Santi (since 1958) for the Italian repertoire and Nikolaus Harnoncourt (from 1975 to 2011) primarily for Monteverdi and Mozart, and later also for Johann Strauss, Jacques Offenbach , Carl Maria von Weber and Giuseppe Verdi.

From 1995, Franz Welser-Möst was chief conductor of the opera house. The highlight under his direction was the performance of the entire cycle of Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen (2001/2002) and the election of the orchestra by the magazine Opernwelt as the orchestra of the year 2001 . Since September 2005 he has held the position of General Music Director (GMD). His contract ran until summer 2008. The position of GMD remained vacant until the beginning of the 2012/2013 season, but Daniele Gatti was chief conductor from 2009 to 2012. In 2012 Fabio Luisi took up his post as general music director. In 2018, the opera house announced that he would step down in 2021, a year earlier than planned. Gianandrea Noseda was announced as his successor from autumn 2021 .

ballet

The Zurich Opera House is home to its own ballet ensemble of around 50 dancers, the Ballet Zurich (formerly the Zurich Ballet ).

From 1978 to 1985, Balanchine specialist Patricia Neary was ballet director. With the 1985/1986 season, Uwe Scholz (1958-2004) became the company's director and chief choreographer .

In 1991 the young Viennese director, choreographer and set designer Bernd Roger Bienert became the new head of the Zurich Ballet. Every season, two to three premieres, sensational world premieres by contemporary musicians and writers such as Luciano Berio and Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek were performed in his production. Binert's Nutcracker, for whom the architect Mario Botta designed his first stage set, achieved the highest audience occupancy that the Opera House's ballet has recorded since the beginning of its foundation, at the same time the third place of all Zurich theater productions this season. Bienert brought dance stars like Yen Han and Ethan Stiefel to Zurich. He worked on numerous world premieres with the architects Jean Nouvel and Renzo Piano as well as composers such as Hans-Jürgen von Bose and Roman Haubenstock-Ramati . Another innovation in Bienert's time as director was reconstructions of important historical dance performances by the Ballets Russes and the Ballets Suédois . This was done in collaboration with internationally recognized dance historians such as Millicent Hodson and Claudia Jeschke. They were pieces such as Sacre du printemps and L'après-midi d'un faune by Nijinsky or Skating Rink by Jean Börlin, set by Fernand Léger to the music of Arthur Honegger .

From 1996 to 2012 the choreographer Heinz Spoerli was the ballet director. Under him, the staffed ballet company maintained a neoclassical dance style. This made danced performances of the Goldberg Variations or A Midsummer Night's Dream a success with audiences and critics alike. With Giselle , Romeo and Juliet and The Nutcracker , Heinz Spoerli also dedicated himself to the great classic narrative ballets. He also premiered his own full-length choreographies dedicated to a great composer: Brahms Ein Ballett (1997), … a light, bright, beautiful distance ( Mozart , 1999), and avoided the wind ( Bach , 1999).

In the summer of 2012, Heinz Spoerli retired for reasons of age. His successor is Christian Spuck , previously a choreographer with the Stuttgart Ballet .

World premieres music theater (selection)

Stage portal opera house

Organization and finance

Opernhaus Zürich AG (which was called “Theater-Aktiengesellschaft” until 1991) has more than 2,400 shareholders, none of whom own more than 10% of the total of 9,058 ordinary shares. The share capital amounts to CHF 8,808,000. Opernhaus Zürich AG operates a music theater and ballet on behalf of the Canton of Zurich.

The bases for this are in the Opera House Act of February 15, 2010, in the basic contract between the Canton of Zurich and Opernhaus Zürich AG of November 26, 2010 and February 9, 2011, and the performance agreement between the Canton of Zurich and Opernhaus Zürich AG of 17/18 . January 2012 defined and regulated. The Zurich Opera House received grants of CHF 80 million from the Canton of Zurich in the 2016/2017 season, which corresponds to a reduction of CHF 630,000 compared to the 2015/2016 season. The income from ticket sales amounted to around CHF 26 million. The CHF 9 million mark was recorded in sponsorship, which is another record result. Opernhaus Zürich AG's partners are the two major Swiss banks Credit Suisse and UBS .

Award

literature

Web links

Commons : Zurich Opera House  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See also Festschrift for the 175th anniversary of the Theater-Aktiengesellschaft. Ed .: Zurich Opera House. November 4, 2009 (version of January 7, 2010), pp. 14-18, further illustration on p. 16 ( issuu.com/opernhauszuerich [PDF; 12.6 MB; accessed on June 30, 2019]).
  2. ↑ Marco Badilatti: Zurich Opera House, Zurich ZH. In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz. Volume 2. Chronos Verlag, Zurich 2005, pp. 1350–1352 ( theaterwissenschaft.ch [accessed on June 30, 2019]).
  3. ↑ Monument Preservation Inventory of the City of Zurich. (No longer available online.) In: www2.plaene-zuerich.ch. Archived from the original on October 3, 2009 ; accessed on June 30, 2019 .
  4. ^ Zurich Opera House. In: ZEIT Reisen. [O. D.], accessed August 9, 2018.
  5. ^ Website of the International Opera Awards - The 2014 winners. (No longer available online.) In: operaawards.org. Archived from the original on April 12, 2014 ; accessed on June 30, 2019 .
  6. ^ Andreas Homoki director of the Zurich Opera House from 2012. In: NZZ . June 25, 2008, accessed December 22, 2015.
  7. ↑ Annual report of the opera house, 2012/13 season. P. 10.
  8. ↑ New chief conductor for the Zurich Opera House. In: srf.ch , July 2, 2018, accessed June 30, 2019.
  9. ↑ Christian Spuck succeeds Heinz Spoerli. Spuck, currently active in Stuttgart, will succeed Spoerlis in Zurich from 2012. (No longer available online.) In: Basler Zeitung . January 6, 2010; Archived from the original on January 8, 2010 ; accessed on June 30, 2019 .
  10. ↑ a b Zurich Opera House. Corporation. In: opernhaus.ch. Retrieved January 29, 2018 .
  11. ↑ a b c d Zurich Opera House. Aktiengesellschaft Annual reports. Annual report 2016/2017. Retrieved January 29, 2018 .
  12. ↑ Less financial leeway: balance sheet of the opera house. In: NZZ.ch. Retrieved January 29, 2018 .
  13. ^ Zurich Opera House. About us. In: opernhaus.ch. Retrieved January 29, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Opera! Awards 2019

Coordinates: 47 ° 21 '54 "  N , 8 ° 32' 49"  E ; CH1903:  683,719  /  two hundred and forty-six thousand six hundred and eight