Opern Air - an opera festival for everyone

To mark the commemorative year 2025, a special Opera Air concert will be held in Vienna's Burggarten featuring Elīna Garanča, Sonya Yoncheva, Jonas Kaufmann, Benjamin Bernheim and Boris Pinkhasovich, as well as the Vienna State Opera Chorus and Orchestra. Bertrand de Billy will conduct.

2025 is an important year for Austria. It marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism and the establishment of the Second Republic, and we are also celebrating 70 years of the State Treaty. However, 1945 and 1955 are also decisive dates in the history of the Vienna State Opera: On 12 March 1945, bombs hit the building on the Ringstrasse, large parts of it burned down, and it took 24 hours to extinguish the fire. Just two months after the destruction, emergency artistic operations were made possible at the Volksoper and later also at the Theater an der Wien. Meanwhile, the building on the Ringstrasse was rebuilt.

The grand reopening took place on 5 November 1955. After a ceremony in the morning, Beethoven's Fidelio, ‘the’ opera about unjust rule and liberation through love, was performed in the evening. And the performance became a symbol of a new Austria.

The fact that the new director of the Vienna State Opera, conductor Karl Böhm, had also been the last director during the Nazi era was kept quiet. The fact that Hans Tietjen, the director of Fidelio, was just as much a Nazi artist as Rudolf Eisenmenger, who was allowed to design the iron curtain and for whom big names such as Fritz Wotruba were passed over, was also not mentioned. As was the case with many other things. In 1955, the Vienna State Opera was therefore a symbol of many things – freedom, devotion, passion, identity. And, unfortunately, also of Austria's highly questionable handling of its immediate past at that time.

Further information: https://www.wiener-staatsoper.at/kalender/detail/opern-air/

Photos: KS Elīna Garanča © Sarah Katharina; KS Jonas Kaufmann © Gregor Hohenberg Sony Music; Sonya Yoncheva © Victor Santiago; Benjamin Bernheim © Edouard Brane