Vienna Opera House

The Emperor of Austria, Franz Josef, was merely the age of twenty seven at the time when he decided to expand the city of Vienna, and in order to do so he held an international contest that was announced on the 30th of January in order to decide who would expand the inner city. Two architects came in first place and worked together in order to complete the Vienna Opera House, the first of the two was August Sicard von Sicardsburg, he designed the structure of the opera house. The second architect was Eduard van der Null, who designed the interior of the building. The construction began in 1861 and finished in 1869. This would be the first opera built in Vienna and although there were two architects working on the project, neither of the two architects survived to see the opening of the opera house. Eduard van der Null committed suicide and August Sicard von Sicardsburg died of a stroke soon after. The original structure of the building has been preserved since 1869. This original facade was a series of arches of Renaissance style. This was juxtaposed to the facade that faces the ring road contains a veranda. “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” There was a constant juxtaposition in the building as it accounted for both its adjacent sides. This Juxtaposition continues on the inside as the building is separated into public and private program. The rear of the building houses the stage and the necessary rooms to go along with it. These programmatic pieces were considered private. On the other hand, The auditorium of the building is placed in the front of the building along with the other rooms that are open to the public. Yet these two sides were not completely separated. There was a vaulted roof placed over both the stage and auditorium that also housed all the secondary public and private rooms. This vaulted roof was juxtaposed to “ 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”. There was a democratic concept behind the seatings in these performance rooms as they believed everyone should get an equal view and experience of the stage. They have since lowered the amount of seats in the auditorium from 2,881 to 2,284 due to building codes and fire regulations, the only changes made to the acoustics were the addition of wood to cover the reinforced concrete boxes, other than that the acoustics have remained top class throughout the year.

https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/en/staatsoper/the-opera-house/architecture/