Wuppertal Opera House
The Wuppertal Opera House is a theater building originally built in 1905 as the Barmen City Theater, which today is the main venue for the Wuppertal Theaters and the Pina Bausch Dance Theater . As a building that was renovated in the style of the 1950s after the Second World War and originally committed to Art Nouveau , the building complex, which was expanded with additions in the 1970s and completely renovated from 2006 to 2009, is a listed building.
Building history
In 1905 the original building was completed according to a design by the Cologne architect Carl Moritz . This building, a mixture of Neo-Baroque and Art Nouveau , was badly damaged in an air raid on Barmen on the night of May 30, 1943 .
After long discussions about whether to demolish the ruins and build a completely new building or whether to plan using the remaining building fabric, the decision was made to reuse the ruins, not least for reasons of cost.
On Sunday, October 14, 1956, the house was reopened with a ceremony and a gala performance of Paul Hindemith's opera Mathis der Maler . It ended the provisional opera house set up in the town hall in Elberfeld after the destruction of the former Wuppertal City Theater . For the first time in its history, the theater was used exclusively as a venue for opera and ballet - and from 1974 onwards, in addition to the Elberfelder Schauspielhaus, also for Pina Bausch's dance theater. After being rebuilt from the ruins, a theater with four tiers in the auditorium had now become a house with two tiers. According to Friedrich Hetzelt , head of the Wuppertal building, the restoration of the “difficult-to-digest formal language of Art Nouveau” was deliberately avoided. Despite the old shell, it was a building based on the aesthetic sense of the 1950s. As a significant example of this (interior) architectural direction, it is now a listed building .
Due to a negative fire protection report , the closure of the opera house in December 2003 became inevitable. In December 2002 the council of the city of Wuppertal decided to renovate the house, which started at the end of 2006 after a long lead-time. On January 18, 2009, the Wuppertal Opera House was reopened with a ceremony.
literature
- Kurt Hackenberg, Walter Schwaegermann (ed.): From the theater in Wuppertal. Born Verlag, Wuppertal no year (shortly after the Barmer Opera House reopened)
- Siegfried Becker: Theater in Wuppertal. 50 years of review. Wuppertal no year (approx. 1995).
- Joachim Dorfmüller: Wuppertal music history. Born Verlag, Wuppertal 1995, ISBN 3-87093-074-8 .
- Michael Okroy: "... so that dreams can breathe" - From the Stadttheater Barmen to the Wuppertal Opera House. Born Verlag, Wuppertal 2009, ISBN 978-3-87093-095-0 .
Web links
- Entry in the Wuppertal monument list
- Official website of the Wuppertaler Bühnen
swell
- ↑ Martina Thöne: Back to the 50s. New plans for the opera house. in: Westdeutsche Zeitung of March 3, 2007 (report on the plans)
Coordinates: 51 ° 16 ′ 2.2 ″ N , 7 ° 11 ′ 35.3 ″ E