Architecture
Looking at the front of the building from the Ring Road, one can see the original structure that has been preserved since 1869. The facades are decorated in Renaissance-style arches, and the veranda on the Ring Road side emphasizes the public character of the building.
The statues of the two riders on horseback were placed on the main facade of the loggia in 1876. They were created by Ernst Julius Hähnel, and represent Erato’s two winged horses that are led by »Harmony and the Muse of Poetry«.
On the arches above the veranda are Hähnel’s five bronze statues representing, from left to right: heroism, tragedy, fantasy, comedy, and love. On the right and left sides of the opera house are two fountains by Josef Gasser, representing two different worlds: on the left, music, dance, joy, and levity, and on the right, seduction, sorrow, love, and revenge.
The rear part of the two-piece building is clearly broader, and includes the stage and the surrounding rooms. The narrower front part contains the auditorium and the adjoining rooms that are open to the public. The different roof styles are remarkable: the vaulted roof over the stage and auditorium that towers above all the secondary rooms; the hipped roof of the transverse wings; the gable roof of the connecting structures between the transverse wings; and the French roofs of the towers.
The transverse wings, which stand perpendicular to the main building, originally served as driveways for horse-drawn carriages. At the front of the transverse wing, one finds the coats of arms of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
When you enter through one of the main front doors of the lobby, which has been preserved in its original form, you get an immediate impression of the interior of the old opera house. Unaffected by the bombing were the whole main front, the main lobby, the central staircase, the Schwind Foyer and attached veranda, and the Tea Salon on the first floor. These have been preserved in their original state.
In the first section of the staircase, from the central entrance to the side boxes, hang two medallions designed by sculptor Josef Cesar, bearing the portraits of the designers, August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll. Above these, hang two paintings by Johann Preleuthner, symbolizing the ballet and the opera. Adorning the staircase is the ceiling painting »Fortuna, ihre Gaben streuend« (»Fortune, scattering her gifts«), from a design by Franz Dobiaschofsky. Also representing his work are the canvas paintings in the three arches, depicting the ballet, comic opera, and tragic opera. The allegorical statues designed by Josef Gasser embody the seven liberal arts: architecture, sculpture, poetry, dance, musical art, drama, and painting.
The historical highlight of the opera house is the Tea Salon, formerly the Emperor’s Salon, located between the staircase and the central boxes. The former Imperial box had been previously reserved for Vienna’s royalty and their guests. The freshly colored ceiling painting, »Die Musik auf Adlerschwingen« (»The Music on Eagles’ Wings«), by Karl Madjera, represents both lyrical and tragic music. The ceiling and walls are decorated with 22 carat gold leaf. One can also find sculptures by August La Ligne, wall embroideries from the Giani studio, and tapestries bearing the initials of Franz Joseph I.
The 120-meter long intermission halls of the State Opera connect to frame the main staircase. To the right of the stairs lies the Gustav Mahler Hall, which was, until May of 1997, called the Tapestry Hall. It was named because of the tapestries which adorn its wall, designed by Rudolf Eisenmenger, with motifs from Mozart's »Zauberflöte« (»Magic Flute«). Up to 1944, this room had been the director’s office, where all the directors, from Franz von Dingelstedt to Karl Böhm, presided. The room was named after Gustav Mahler on May 11, 1997 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of his conducting debut at the opera house, which ultimately led to his appointment as director. Since then, a portrait by the artist R.B. Kitaj decorates the area where Mahler once worked.
A wall opening directly connects the Gustav Mahler Hall and the original entrance hall, formerly called the Promenade Hall. Today this magnificent hall is called the »Schwind Foyer« because of the sixteen sketched oil paintings by Moritz von Schwind decorating the hall. The paintings represent operas that were previously well known, but are rarely performed today.
Reconstruction
After the bombing of the Vienna State Opera on March 12, 1945, the removal of the rubble began during the war, followed by securing work and static investigations as well as the lengthy clean-up and restoration work, which took several years due to the shortage of building materials and labor. Like St. Stephen's Cathedral, the State Opera, one of Austria's most important identity-forming monuments, was the first to be rebuilt. In 1946, the advisory Opera Building Committee was set up for this purpose, and in 1947 the Reconstruction Fund. After two competitions to obtain artistic designs for the reconstruction of the auditorium - an open ideas competition, which met with little approval, and an invited competition - the decision was in principle made in favor of the building program that the state construction management had already worked out in a basic design in 1946 before the competitions. In 1949, Erich Boltenstern received the commission for the overall artistic direction of the reconstruction as well as for the design of the auditorium according to the earlier model; the architects Ceno Kosak and Otto Prossinger / Fritz Cevela were entrusted with the redesign of today's Gustav Mahler Hall and the Marble Hall.
While it was assumed that the auditorium designed by Eduard van der Nüll and August Sicard von Sicardsburg in the 1860s would be reconstructed almost true to the original - including the technically unnecessary gallery columns that obstruct the view - Erich Boltenstern was able to persuade the architects over the course of the years that the two tiers should be designed without columns. With its red-gold-ivory color scheme, the auditorium strongly recalls the design of the 19th century; at the same time, there is a simplification of the design of the boxes, a reduction and simplification of the ornamentation and sculptural decoration, and a complete renunciation of a painterly design. Boltenstern himself speaks of a "solution outside the contemporary in modern architecture" and complains that a stronger abstraction of the ornamental was rejected by the client.
Together with the architect, Robert Obsieger developed the decorative elements consisting of a few basic elements (profiled leaves and bars), while Hilda Schmid-Jesser, the only artist involved in the reconstruction, was responsible for the final version. Through this reduced formal language, the room loses some of its former historicist heaviness, but retains its representative character. The reconstruction of La Scala in Milan in 1946 served as a model for the decision against a new design and in favor of reconstruction according to the old model. As with the court opera building of the 19th century, the reconstructed opera can also be spoken of as a total work of art, since in addition to the architecture, all the furnishings such as chairs, benches, desks, buffets, coat racks, lamps, mirrors, and even the door handles and music stands originate from "one" hand. Here, too, the respective architects were responsible for "their" rooms, and the same applies to the choice of artists for the painterly, sculptural and handicraft decoration. Erich Boltenstern had invited Wander Bertoni for two reliefs in a foyer and Giselbert Hoke for the two monumental murals in the smoking rooms, the ballroom by Otto Prossinger /Felix Cevela was furnished by Heinz Leinfellner with large-scale marble works, while Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger provided the designs for the tapestries in the Gobelin Hall, today the Gustav Mahler Hall. In the competition held especially for the Iron Curtain - there were four rounds of competition with a total of 16 artists - Rudolf Hermann Eisenmenger also prevailed and was able to execute a traditional, rather unimaginative, antique-style design (the Bild Telegraph spoke of "Orpheus and Eurydice in KdF style"). The artist's closeness to National Socialism and, above all, the way those responsible for reconstruction at the time dealt with this circumstance finally led, more than 40 years later, to an exhibition project in which the Iron Curtain of 1955 serves as a temporary image carrier for annually changing curtain designs by contemporary artists. While the Gobelin Hall, designed by Ceno Kosak and furnished with Eisenmenger's tapestries, with its effortful representational architecture seems rather to be connected to the architecture of the past years of National Socialism ("civil servant baroque"), the reconstruction of the auditorium by Erich Boltenstern as well as the Marble Hall by Otto Prossinger / Felix Cevela can be described as of high quality, but stylistically rather conservative, belonging to moderate modernism. Erich Boltenstern cannot be counted among the great modernists of 20th century architecture, but comparisons with his contemporary works show that it was above all the artistic will of the client and not that of the architect that prevailed here. Nevertheless, and this is probably Boltenstern's real achievement, the Vienna State Opera, when we enter it today, conveys the feeling of a cohesive whole, where old and new areas merge harmoniously without much fuss.
Anna Stuhlpfarrer (abridged from: Vienna State Opera, The Reconstruction 1945-1955, Molden Verlag, Vienna, 2019.
The backstage area was newly constructed during the postwar period, using the existing foundations. Desperately needed rehearsal space was added to the original design, in addition to a cafeteria and several administrative rooms. Most of the premises, including the dressing rooms, were equipped with speakers and a video monitoring system, which allows the performers and stagehands to constantly observe the stage.
In the summer months from 1991 to 1993, and during a six month period in 1994, the Vienna State Opera experienced extensive renovation work. In order to create more precise and trouble-free backstage operations, hydraulically operated lifting platforms and electromechanical lifts were installed using the latest technology. The power supply to the State Opera, which was previously sourced by the Hofburg, is now operated by two substations. In addition to these measures, a new heating system, ventilation system, fire protection system and fire detection system were installed and remain completely invisible to the audience. Other auditorium renovations, such as painting and the installation of new box seating also took place.
During the six month period in 1994 when the State Opera was closed for renovations, a previously unused space was acoustically adapted into a beautiful new rehearsal hall. On September 1, 1995, this hall was named »Probebühne Eberhard Waechter« (Rehearsal Stage Eberhard Waechter), to keep the memory of the late singer and opera director alive.
On November 2, 2004, the largest rehearsal stage in the Vienna State Opera, was renamed »Carlos Kleiber Probebühne« (Rehearsal Stage Carlos Kleiber). In this way, the memory of the extraordinary conductor will be upheld.
In addition to these rehearsal stages, the State Opera now has three halls for ensemble rehearsals, with space for a choir and an orchestra, and also the Organ Hall on the sixth floor. The Organ Hall received its name from the 2,500 pipe organ that it houses. The Vienna State Opera is the world’s only opera house with such a large pipe organ. The hall is not only used for rehearsals, but also during performances where the sound will actually transfer into the auditorium. Other »live« acoustic impressions are created in the hall, such as the hammering of the anvils in Wagner's »Rheingold«. The State Opera additionally holds ten acoustically isolated individual practice rooms, and both a large and a small ballet rehearsal hall.
The central box gives a spectacular view of the horseshoe-shaped auditorium, which had to be completely rebuilt after the Second World War. Erich Boltenstern, a professor at the Technical University and the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, was awarded the privilege of redesigning the auditorium, the new staircases leading to the former third floor gallery, all public coat rooms, and the intermission halls in the upper levels. The architects Otto Prossinger, Ceno Kosak, and Felix Čevela took over the design of the intermission halls in the lower level. Van der Nüll and Sicardsburg’s original plan for the basic shape of the box theater with three tiers and two levels of open boxes (balcony and gallery) was retained.
The capacity of the auditorium is now 2,284 instead of the previous 2,881. It offers 1,709 seats, 567 standing spaces, 4 wheelchair spaces, and 4 wheelchair companion seats. The reduction of the number of spaces is due to stricter building codes and fire regulations. The reinforced concrete boxes were covered with wood for acoustic reasons, as the acoustics of the Vienna Opera House have always been of unprecedented brilliance. Some of the lateral upper tier seats with limited visibility were equipped with lamps for the purpose of reading the scores during the performance. The traditional colors of red, gold, and ivory were used for the auditorium, and the large central chandelier was replaced for safety by ring of built-in ceiling lights made of crystal glass. The glass ring weighs about 3,000 kilograms and uses 1,100 bulbs. It is 7 meters in diameter and 5 meters high; it has space for a lighting stand and corridors for maintenance of the system.
Rudolf Eisenmenger designed the iron curtain that separates the audience from the stage. It shows a scene from Gluck's opera »Orpheus and Eurydice«. In the spring of 1998, the State Opera commissioned the group »museum in progress« with creating a new picture for each season. This requires a specially developed process, which both guarantees the preservation of Eisenmenger's image, and shows the optimal quality of the newly created contemporary work. With the creation of contemporary museum space inside the Vienna State Opera, this traditional house shows its openness towards progressive artistic developments.
The orchestra pit is the nightly home to musicians from one of the most famous ensembles in the world: the members of the State Opera Orchestra, from which musicians for the Vienna Philharmonic are recruited. The orchestra pit, with 123 square meters of space, holds approximately 110 musicians.
For fire protection, there are three iron curtains: the main curtain which separates the stage from the auditorium, and two more to fireproof the side stages and the backstage. For additional protection, the previous wooden ceilings were replaced by reinforced concrete slabs. In place of the previous slate roof coupled with wooden shingles, a new fireproof, waterproof and windproof roof was built. This copper skin over a thin reinforced concrete shell was the original desire of architect Van der NüIl, and it was finally brought to fruition many years later.
Terraces were added on the top floor, creating not only additional escape routes, but also outdoor intermission areas during the warmer months.