The Vienna State Opera is the largest musical center in Europe. Until 1918, it was known as the Vienna Court Opera.

Vienna is the city of Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms, Schubert and Strauss. Their ashes rest in the Viennese cemetery. Their works are performed in Vienna’s theaters. The houses where they lived and worked have been preserved in Vienna. In Schoenbrunn Palace you can see the room where the little Mozart played to Empress Maria Theresa; in the Cathedral of St. Stephen – a tiny chapel, where he was buried. The house where Beethoven wrote his “Heroic Symphony” and the house where Schubert was born and the school where he studied have all survived. But there have also been mishaps. So, already in our time, in the house where Schubert lived for some time and where the song “The Forest King” was written, a car garage was arranged, naming it after the great composer…

In the city of music, in Vienna, as well as in the whole of Austria, the opera is used to be considered a national treasure. The theater was born in the mid 17th century, when the first performances of the Italian company took place at the court of the Austrian emperor. Since the second half of the 17th century court operas have been performed regularly by the Austrian Royal Chapel. About 10-12 new operas were staged each year, mostly by composers of the Venetian and Neapolitan schools of opera. The productions were marked by festive splendor, great pomp and luxury. Until 1700 about 400 operas were presented. In 1697 the building of a special building for the theater was started (later it was destroyed by fire). Performances were held first in the “Burggeatheater” in Vienna, and then in a specially built for opera performances “Carntnertotheater”. In the early 18th century the Austrian theater began to struggle against the excessive pomp of opera productions, against the domination of Italian operas and for the affirmation of the national style of opera. The work of Austrian composers I. Fuchs, I. Zelenka and others begins actively. The heyday of creative activity came in the second half of the 18th century, it was connected with Gluck’s opera reform and the staging of Mozart’s operas. From the beginning of the 19th century the theater staged the best operas by German, Austrian, Italian, and French composers.

On May 25, 1869 the new building of the Court Opera was opened in the center of Vienna. It was designed by architects E. van der Nulle and A. Zickard von Zickardsburg and was long considered one of the best theatrical buildings in the world. However, despite the presence of a number of outstanding performers and the high level of the chorus and orchestra, the theater experienced a creative decline in the middle of the 19th century. Some revival came when G. Richter became director and chief conductor. Richter became the director and chief conductor. In 1897-1907 the theater experienced a period of prosperity. During these years the theater was led by Mahler (1860-1911). Mahler significantly updated the repertoire of the theater. Performances under his direction were free of routine stage techniques. Mahler performed Wagner without cuts, Mozart without inserts, and Beethoven’s Fidelio in accordance with the composer’s score. He subordinated all parts of the performance to dramatic unity, revealing the inner meaning of the work, struggling with operatic conventions and superficial deliberate effects. For the first time in Vienna, Mahler staged Verdi’s Falstaff, Strauss’s Without Fire, and operas by Mozart, Weber, and Debussy. He staged Tchaikovsky’s operas Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, and Iolanta for the first time in Vienna. Due to intrigue, he was forced to leave the theater and move to the United States, where he performed, among others, at the Metropolitan Opera. The pioneering essence of his conducting creativity was that Mahler sought to merge the musical and the plastic action. Mahler sought to rebuild the opera house from a commercial theater into a cultural institution, aesthetically educating the audience. As a court theater. Vienna Opera was dependent on the court and the sympathies of the aristocratic court. During this period, preference was given to Austrian composers. In 1918, after the establishment of the Austrian Republic, the theater received state status. Conductors such as K. Kraus, I. Krips, R. Strauss, E. Senker, W. Furtwängl and others, as well as outstanding vocalists of Europe, performed there. In addition to classical opera, operas belonging to modernist trends in art are also staged here. In 1938, after the Nazi occupation of Austria, the direction of the theater was changed, and for the following years the Vienna Opera held a position of a minor provincial theater. Several artists were subjected to repression, while others left the country. On 6 March 1945 it was destroyed by an American bomb. Immediately after the liberation of Austria, the Vienna State Opera company resumed its work. For ten years, while the building was being restored, the company gave performances at the Vienna State Opera and the Volksoper, and it also regularly toured abroad in France, Belgium, Italy and England.

In November 1955, premieres of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Strauss’s Cavalier of the Roses, and Berg’s Wozzeck were inaugurated in the Vienna State Opera’s restored building. From 1959 to 1964 the musical director of the theater was G. Karajan. The best performances of the world opera repertoire, excellent internationally renowned singers and brilliant conductors performed and continue to perform on the stage of this theater.