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Alte Oper

Concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Summary

Concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Field	Value
name	Alte Oper
former_names	Opernhaus
status	Rebuild
image	Alte Oper Frankfurt 2019.jpg
caption	Alte Oper in 2019
mapframe-marker	music
building_type	Concert Hall
architectural_style	Neo-Renaissance
cost	20 million German mark (1871)
ren_cost	200 million Deutsche Mark
location	Bankenviertel, Altstadt
address	Opernplatz 1
location_town	Frankfurt am Main
location_country	Germany
coordinates
mapframe-zoom	14
start_date	1873
completion_date	1880
inauguration_date
renovation_date	1976–81
destruction_date	23 March 1944
seating_capacity
architect	Richard Lucae
main_contractor	Philipp Holzmann
ren_architect	Helmut Braun, Martin Schlockermann
parking	Alte Oper underground car park
website
public_transit

| mapframe-marker = music | mapframe-zoom = 14 Alte Oper (Old Opera) is a concert hall in Frankfurt am Main, Hesse, Germany. It is located in the inner city, Innenstadt, within the banking district Bankenviertel. Today's Alte Oper was built in 1880 as the city's opera house, which was destroyed by bombs in 1944. It was rebuilt in the 1970s as a concert hall with a large hall and smaller venues, opened in 1981. The square in front of the building is still known as Opernplatz (Opera Square).

Many important works were performed for the first time when it was Frankfurt's opera house, including Schreker's Der ferne Klang and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in 1937. The Oper Frankfurt now plays in the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, completed in 1951.

Historic opera house

The building was designed by the Berlin architect Richard Lucae, financed by the citizens of Frankfurt and built by Philipp Holzmann. Construction began in 1873. It opened on 20 October 1880. Among the guests was Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, who was impressed and said: Das könnte ich mir in Berlin nicht erlauben. (I couldn't permit myself this sort of thing in Berlin.) The opening was also celebrated by Mozart's Don Giovanni.

The costs increased from the originally planned 2 million marks to a multiple. Alluding to the inscription on the frieze

:"Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten", ("To the true, the beautiful, the good")

the folkloristic Frankfurt poet wrote, in his best Hessian dialect:

:Dem Wahre, Scheene, Gute, die Berjerschaft muß blude. (To the true, the beautiful, the good, the citizens must bleed.)

Concert hall

The opera house was extensively damaged by bombing raids during World War II in 1944, though many of the outside walls and façades survived. In the 1960s the city magistrate planned to build a modern office building on the site. The then Minister of Economy in Hessen Rudi Arndt, earned the nickname "Dynamit-Rudi" (Dynamite Rudi) when he proposed to blow up "Germany's most beautiful ruin" with "a little dynamite". Arndt later saved the Alte Oper.

A citizen's initiative campaigned for reconstruction funds after 1953 and collected 15 million DM. It ended costing 160 million DM, and the building was reopened on 28 August 1981 to the sounds of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8, the "Symphony of a Thousand". A live recording of that concert conducted by Michael Gielen is available on CD.

Alte Oper has venues of different size:

Großer Saal (Large Hall) with 2500 seats
Mozart-Saal, 700 seats
and smaller halls for conventions.

Gallery

Alte Oper Frankfurt am Main 2012.jpg|Front Alte Oper East Facade.JPG|Eastern facade in September 2014 FFM-AlteOper-HDR--DINA4.jpg|Alte Oper at night Oper1880.jpg|Frankfurt opera house, 1880

References

Notes Sources

References

Klein, Michael. "Objekte L".
(28 August 2011). "Deutschlands schönste Ruine".
"Alte Oper".
Hartmann, Andreas. (23 August 2021). "Überall funkelte es golden".
"Alte Oper Frankfurt (Old Opera House)".
Groß, p. 50
"Alte Oper Frankfurt (Old Opera House)".
(21 December 2009). "Chronik und Historie". Alte Oper Frankfurt Konzert- und Kongresszentrum GmbH.
"Alte Oper Frankfurt (Old Opera House)".
(3 April 2017). "Alte Oper".
(1982). "Frankfurt – Metropole am Main: Geschichte und Zukunft". Econ-Verlag.
Gantevoort, Joy. (22 January 2018). "Wie die Frankfurter Oper fast gesprengt wurde: "Nur ein bisschen Dynamit"".
Michels, Claudia. (29 October 2011). "Er war Dynamit".
"Eröffnungskonzert".
"Daten · Fakten · Hintergründe : Erweiterte Suche : LAGIS Hessen".
(1992). "Symphony no. 8 "Symphony of a thousand"; "Symphonie der Tausend"". Sony.
(1981). "Symphonie no. 8 Symphonie der Tausend; Live-Mitschnitt d. Konzerts zur Wiedereröffnung d. Alten Oper Frankfurt vom 28. August 1981".

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

buildings-and-structures-in-frankfurt culture-in-frankfurt opera-houses-in-germany concert-halls-in-germany tourist-attractions-in-frankfurt music-venues-completed-in-1880 theatres-completed-in-1880 frankfurt-altstadt bankenviertel rebuilt-buildings-and-structures-in-germany defunct-opera-houses frankfurt-radio-symphony

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