Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

The Festspielhaus Baden-Baden is Germany's largest opera and concert house, seating 2,500, yet its front door is a railway station. Visitors enter through the Belle Époque city terminus built in 1904, which served trains until the branch line closed in 1977. Behind it the Viennese architect Wilhelm Holzbauer added a vast modern hall, opened on 18 April 1998 with Valery Gergiev conducting. After a rocky start the house achieved something unheard of in Europe, running entirely without public subsidy since 2002, financed by ticket sales and patrons.

With no ensemble of its own, the Festspielhaus works festival style, drawing the world's finest orchestras and soloists to the spa town. Its greatest coup came in 2013, when the Berliner Philharmoniker moved their Easter Festival from Salzburg to Baden-Baden and opened the first edition with Die Zauberflöte, staged by Robert Carsen and conducted by Simon Rattle, the orchestra's first staged performance of Mozart's opera.

architect: Wilhelm Holzbauer

On stage here

Performance dates

Data: open sources (opera houses, ticketing platforms, Wikidata). Part of the worldwide Die Zauberflöte map.