Theater Bielefeld

Bielefeld owes its Stadttheater partly to a tobacco manufacturer's widow: a donation from Frau Crüwell set the fundraising in motion, and the city hired Bernhard Sehring, architect of Berlin's Theater des Westens. His theatre opened on 3 April 1904 with Weber's Jubel-Ouvertüre and Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans, behind a facade whose Jugendstil flourishes still make it one of Germany's most distinctive theatre fronts. The portico was damaged in the Second World War and later restored, and a 23-million-euro renovation from 2004 to 2006 renewed the auditorium, which now seats about 725.

Die Zauberflöte stands at the very beginning of opera in this house. When the city took the theatre over in 1918, enlarged the orchestra and founded a resident company, Mozart's opera opened the new music-theatre branch that September. Today Theater Bielefeld plays drama, opera and dance across three venues, and Die Zauberflöte keeps returning to the stage where the city's operatic life began.

architect: Bernhard Sehring

On stage here

Performance dates

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