At 7 pm on 13 June 1801, the curtain rose on the inaugural performance at the newly built Theater an der Wien. Thus began the story of a theatre that was to stage some of the most important performances in the history of music and is today one of the oldest theatres still operating in Vienna. From the outset, the theatre on Linke Wienzeile was known for the diversity of its programmes, including as they did concerts and tragedies as well as folk plays, farces, fairy tales and extravaganzas. The theatre went on to become Vienna’s foremost operetta venue, before becoming the centre of large-scale musical productions in the twentieth century. Since 2006, it has been an opera house. Today, the MusikTheater an der Wien stands for programmes that bring four centuries of musical theatre to life in all its forms.

Construction of this theatre was only made possible by the so-called “Spektakelfreiheit” issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1776. This edict allowed the establishment of private theatres outside the city walls, and thus independently of the court theatres within them, which ushered in a flourishing theatre culture for the middle classes. In 1791, Emanuel Schikaneder, actor, singer, author and theatre manager, had joined forces with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the Freihaustheater an der Wieden on the other side of the River Wien to create a work that combines elements of folk plays and grand opera and is still immensely popular today: The Magic Flute. The proceeds from this successful production made it possible to build the new Theater an der Wien, which at the time was Vienna’s biggest theatre and boasted the most sophisticated stage machinery. The Papageno-Tor in Léhargasse still serves as a reminder of the founding director, Emanuel Schikaneder.

In the decades that followed, a lot happened at the Theater an der Wien: Ludwig van Beethoven performed not only his symphonies and orchestral works here, but also the first two versions of his only opera, Fidelio. In Ferdinand Raimund and, later, Johann Nestroy, the seminal exponents of classic Viennese popular theatre performed here in the mid-nineteenth century. From the 1860s, the new genre of operetta dominated the stage: the resident composers Franz von Suppè and Carl Millöcker delivered quintessentially Viennese works, while operettas by Jacques Offenbach, imported from France and translated by Nestroy, proved hugely popular. From 1871, Johann Strauss premiered nearly all of his operettas here. Franz Lehár, Emmerich Kálmán, Leo Fall, Ralph Benatzky and Paul Abraham subsequently went on to make the Theater an der Wien a Mecca of operetta until its closure in 1938. Up to that point, performances had also taken place in the theatre basement: the revue stage known as the “Hölle” was founded in 1906 and presented greats such as Fritz Grünbaum, Karl Farkas, Hans Moser and Hugo Wiener along with compositions by Ralph Benatzky and Franz Léhar. In 1945, the theatre reopened as a replacement for the Vienna State Opera and its intimacy provided an ideal setting for the legendary Wiener Mozartensemble. In 1962, the Theater an der Wien played host to the Wiener Festwochen and, apart from the festival performances, German translations of Broadway musicals were the main attraction. Long-running shows such as Cats (from 1983), The Phantom of the Opera (from 1988) and Elisabeth (from 1992) followed. In 2006, under artistic director Roland Geyer, the Theater an der Wien was finally converted to a theatre dedicated entirely to opera. In 2022, Stefan Herheim succeeded him as artistic director and renamed it MusikTheater an der Wien as a better reflection of the house philosophy: a theatre firmly committed to the interplay of music, drama and stagecraft and to the very highest artistic standards which constantly strives to discover the new possibilities offered by this unique art form.

Join us as we step boldly into the future of this historic establishment!