Vienna State Opera

Yesterday MA, Henrik, Ben (Scotland), and I went to the Vienna Staatsoper (State Opera) for the tour. If you're ever in Vienna, the Opera tour is the best €3.50 you can spend. The ticket got us an hour-long English guided tour and entrance to the Opera Museum. Here you can see the side of the Opera House and one of the fountains.
The design of the Opera was heavily criticized when it being built in the 1860s. People felt it was too modern, too plain, and lacked the dramatic impression necessary for an Opera House. The design was criticized so harshly that one of the architects even committed suicide before it was completed. Judge for yourself, here's a photo of the 'plain, undramatic' lobby.
The lobby is connected to the auditorium by a giant marble staircase. It was hard to get a good picture, but here's one from the second floor looking out over the stairs, which you cannot see.
The first stop on the tour was the auditorium. In 1945 the Opera was bombed by the Americans, destroying 90% of the building. The only parts remaining were the Lobby, Staircase, Intermission Room, and the Emperor's Intermission Room. The Auditorium was re-built according to the original plans between 1945 and 1955. There are 5 horse-shoe shaped balconies that wrap the main floor. The upper two balconies, and the central section of the first balcony are standing locations (which you'll hear about later). The central part of the second and third balconies is the 36 seat Emperor's box, which you can rent for only €6000.
The giant crystal chandelier:
This picture shows our tour guide and the immense stage and back-stage area.
Some cool things I learned about the Staatsoper:
- They have all their operas and ballets on rotation, and NEVER show the same one twice in a row. That means that every day last night's show must be dismantled, packed into trucks and driven to the storage facility on the other side of town. Meanwhile, that night's show is brought from storage and assembled. It takes a staff of 400 from 5am-5pm to change shows. The change includes lights, sets, curtains, backdrops, props, and costumes. This means that if you're in Vienna for 5 days, you could see 5 completely different full-scale operas.
- In their storage facility they have over 300,000 costumes.
- The stage has a complex hydraulics system which allows the main stage to be lowered 14m or raised 5m above the level of the rest of the stage. They can also perform a stage rotation where the main stage lowers, the backstage slides forward and another stage from beneath rises to become the new backstage, simultaneously. That allows them to change the entire set in a matter of seconds, in the middle of a show.
-The orchestra is comprised of 80 musicians, and is the feeder-orchestra for the Vienna Philharmonic.
- There are no microphones used, the singers just have to belt like crazy to be heard at the back of the fifth balcony over top of the 80 piece orchestra in front of them.

This is one of the intermission rooms. It has marble busts of all the big opera composers topped by painting of their most famous works.
This is a section of the Opera re-built after WWII. It is a ballroom/rehearsal hall. Yes, that's right, a rehearsal hall with 7 crystal chandeliers, it puts the BAC's Musitheatre to shame.
After we left the opera tour, we went down the street to the museum. It was pretty small, and all in German, but came free with the tour so no complaints here.
We walked home from the Opera through the Burggarten, which is located directly behind the winter Palace, the Hofburg.
This is a palm house and butterfly conservatory.
On the tour, our guide mentioned the Opera ticket prices. For any given performance they range from €2 to €150. The €2.00 tickets are for the standing places on the 4th and 5th balconies, and the €150 tickets are for the prime seats at the front. Last night 'Otello' by Verdi was playing, so Henrik and I decided to go. To get standing tickets you have to line up and buy them 80min before the show starts. We managed to get a pair of €3.50 standing tickets for the central section of the first balcony.

The show was pretty impressive. There was a main cast of 7-8 and a chorus of at least 70. There is a clip on the Staatsoper website. Click here then click on "Videobeispiel" beneath the photo. The show was over 2h long, but the little personal translation screens attached to the leaning bars made the time go by pretty quickly. As each season includes 20 or so shows, I'm going to try to catch as many as possible, they're too cheap to miss.