Vienna State Opera reopens – 1955
After nearly 10 years, the Vienna State Opera reopened on November 5, 1955.
Reopening of the Vienna State Opera
Released by Austria’s post office in 1955
Designer: Hans Ranzoni d. J.
Largely destroyed in the dying days of WW2, the Vienna State Opera officially reopened with the concert Beethoven’s Fidelio conducted by Karl Böhm and broadcast live on state TV Österreichischer Rundfunk.
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.
You can read more about the reconstruction on the Opera House’s webpage. Architecture | History & Architecture | The opera house | About us | Wiener Staatsoper