The Graz Opera on the Opernring, with its stage house facing Kaiser-Josef-Platz, opened in 1899 as the municipal theatre: on 16 September with Schiller's William Tell, and the following day with Wagner's Lohengrin conducted by Karl Muck. The free-standing neo-Baroque building was designed by the Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer as its thirtieth theatre, modelled on the Vienna Court Opera. An octagonal dome crowns the entrance hall. The Baroque and Rococo auditorium with its tiers of boxes originally held around 2,000 seats. Repaired after war damage, the house was carefully modernised from 1983 to 1985. It is Austria's second-largest opera house after the Vienna State Opera, presents opera, ballet, operetta and musicals, and is home to the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra. In 2001 it was named Opera House of the Year.
The Graz Opera, opened in 1899 in Neo-Renaissance style, is one of the most beautiful opera houses in Austria — the city of Graz was an important theatre metropolis of the Habsburg Empire in the nineteenth century.
At a glance
- Type
- Opera house
- Location
- Graz, Austria
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