Opernhaus Zürich

Zurich lost its first permanent theatre, the Actientheater, to a fire on New Year's night 1889/90. The city hired Fellner & Helmer, the Viennese firm behind dozens of European theatres, and their new Stadttheater opened on 1 October 1891 with Wagner's Lohengrin. Renamed Opernhaus Zürich in 1964, the house by the lake seats about 1,100 people and received a thorough renovation and an extension between 1982 and 1984.

Its stage sheltered composers the Nazis had silenced: Berg's Lulu had its world premiere here in 1937, Hindemith's Mathis der Maler followed in 1938, and the first staged performance of Schoenberg's Moses und Aron came in 1957. Mozart shaped the house's modern fame. After their pioneering Monteverdi cycle, conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt and director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle mounted a Mozart cycle here in the 1980s, Die Zauberflöte included, bringing historically informed performance into the opera house and drawing international attention. The opera has stayed a fixture of the Zurich repertoire ever since.

architect: Fellner & Helmer

On stage here

Performance dates

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