The Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth is open again, in all its Baroque glory

Thursday, April 12, 2018

After more than five years of renovation, the Margravial Opera House in Bayreuth will reopen in a ceremony today (12 April). This Baroque opera house is one of a kind in the world, with a splendid wooden interior surrounded by tiered boxes, and has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2012.

The ceremony will be streamed online here. Afterwards, the Theaterakademie August Everding, together with the Bavarian Palace Department, will stage Johann Adolph Hasse’s Artaserse. The performance of this opera seria echoes the opening of the opera house in 1748 by Wilhelmine of Bayreuth (1709-1758). Wilhelmine, the sister of Frederick the Great, chose this work to inaugurate the new building, for which she then served as director.

Johann Adolph Hasse’s opera Artaserse places the ancient Persian court into a world dominated by political machinations and conniving adversaries, in which the father of an alleged murderer condemns his own son to death. The opera was first performed on 11 February 1730 at the Teatro San Giovanni Gristostomo in Venice and was extremely popular. This is also reflected in the over 200 sources for Hasse’s opera in the RISM online catalog.

Image: Libretto by Metastasio for Johann Adolph Hasse’s 1730 opera Artaserse, from Wikimedia Commons.

Catégorie: Evénements