Alte Oper

The Alte Oper Frankfurt am Main

The Alte Oper (Old Opera) is a concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was inaugurated in 1880, bombed in 1944, and rebuilt slowly in the 1970s, reopening only in 1981. The city's opera company operates now at a nearby modern building while the Alte Oper serves as home to the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra. Important works have been premiered at the Alte Oper, including Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in 1937.

Inauguration

Frankfurt Opera House, c. 1880

The building was inaugurated on October 20, 1880. It was designed by the Berlin architect Richard Lucae and financed by the citizens of Frankfurt. Among the invited guests was Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, who was impressed and stated, Das könnte ich mir in Berlin nicht erlauben. (I couldn't permit myself this sort of thing in Berlin.)^{[citation needed]}

The citizens of Frankfurt, who had to finance the structure (initially projected at a cost of two million marks), were rather skeptical in the beginning.^{[citation needed]} Alluding to the inscription on the frieze

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

Frankfurt poet Adolf Stoltze rhymed in his best Hessian dialect:

Dem Wahre, Scheene, Gute, die Berjerschaft muß blute. (To the true, the beautiful, the good the citizenry must give its blood.)^{[citation needed]}

Post WWII

Ruins of the Alte Oper in 1958

The Alte Oper was almost completely destroyed by World War II bombing in 1944 (except parts of the façades), and in the 1960s the city magistrate planned to build a modern office building in place of the ruin. The Hessian minister of economy at the time, Rudi Arndt, earned his nickname "Dynamit-Rudi" (Dynamite Rudi) when he proposed to simply blow up "Germany's most beautiful ruin" by using "a little dynamite". Later, Arndt denied having meant this seriously.^{[citation needed]}

A citizen's initiative campaigned for reconstruction funds after 1953 and collected 15 million DM. Ultimately costing about 160 million DM, the opera house was reopened on August 28, 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.

Today, the Alte Oper consists of:

• The Großer Saal (Large Hall) which has seating for an audience of 2,500.
• The Mozart-Saal with 700 seats.
• Smaller halls used for conventions.

Because the new Frankfurt Opera House had already been built in 1951, the rebuilt Alte Oper was designed for use as a concert hall from the beginning of its reconstruction. Today, it regularly hosts concerts and plays.

Gallery

Images of the Alte Oper

The Alte Oper is in its present state at night   The Alte Oper from the front in the daytime   Alte Oper during blue hour

See also

• List of concert halls

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Alte Oper

• Alte Oper Frankfurt (in English)
• Stadt-Panorama Alte Oper - Interactive 360 degree panorama with day and night views (in German)
• A view on cities
• Philharmonia.co.uk

Coordinates: 50°06′57″N 8°40′19″E / 50.11583°N 8.67194°E / 50.11583; 8.67194