April 2006
Curtain Call
Take a peek behind the scenes of Munich's Nationaltheater
Everyone feels like a star during a night out at Munich’s Nationaltheater, even if they are only sitting in the audience. The sweeping staircases, glittering chandeliers and grandiose architecture of the Neoclassical building cannot fail but impress.
Indeed, the home of the Bavarian State Opera is the largest and possibly most striking opera house in Germany. It was the scene of several of the premieres of Richard Wagner’s operas and today attracts music fanatics from around the world for the annual Munich Opera Festival, which showcases dozens of theatrical highlights, ranging from opera to ballet, concerts and song recitals.
The theater owes its design to Karl von Fischer, who worked as the leading architect under Max I Joseph, the first king of Bavaria. In October 1811, King Max laid the foundation stone for the Nationaltheater, on Marstallplatz. Construction was delayed by a lack of funds brought on by the hard winter of 1813, so the theater didn’t open until October 1818. The original building didn’t stand for long. When a piece of scenery caught fire during a performance in January 1823, the whole place burned down. The city of Munich was appalled by the event and decided to assume the entire rebuilding costs of 800,000 guilders, under the direction of architect Leo von Klenze. And, just two years later, in January 1825, the theater opened its doors to the public once more.
The theater was silenced again by Allied bombing in 1943, which turned the building into an eerie ruin. This time there was talk of building a modern, more modest theater, but Munich citizens put their foot down and demanded their old opera house back. It cost 62 million marks to rebuild and on November 21, 1963, the day before J. F. Kennedy was shot, the theater was reopened. It did include up-to-date stage equipment, but otherwise everything was restored to its original state.
The Nationaltheater is modeled on a Greek temple, with the interior also indebted to classical canons. The large, circular auditorium is decorated predominantly in red, gold and ivory. It is surrounded by five tiers, with the central royal box enjoying a perfect view of the stage. The auditorium also includes a box in “the gods,” where latecomers are ushered, even if they arrive just one minute after a performance has begun. Richard Wagner, who hated to be disturbed during a performance, introduced the custom. The latecomers are compensated for their less-than-perfect view of the stage by excellent sound quality—the best view may be had from the stalls, but the best acoustics can be experienced in the gallery.
Among the theater’s splendid fittings is a 3.6-ton chandelier, which presides over the auditorium, except for once a year, when it is lowered into the stalls to be cleaned. Eight curtains, each weighing several tons, hang over the stage and separate the cast from the audience, with an iron curtain acting as a safety measure in the event of fire. Before the age of electricity, candles had provided the lighting in the theater and thousands of liters of water were stored in giant canisters to act as rudimentary fire extinguishers.
The stage, which continues far beyond what the audience can see, is cleared each night. After a performance, the female cast disappears off to their nearby changing rooms. The male performers, meanwhile, who normally wear more practical costumes than their female counterparts, have to make their way upstairs to the men’s dressing rooms. Underneath the stage, you can find the lift by which Don Giovanni exits when he descends to hell and which the witch in
Hansel and Gretel uses to materialize on stage when her magic powers aren’t strong enough. Crouched in a little room down the corridor sit the prompters, who tend to be retired female singers, with strong voices that can be heard above the sound of the orchestra. The prompters are mistresses of several languages—the theater requires prompters who can speak English, French, German, Italian, Russian and Czech, as operas are sung in their original language.
During the break in a performance, it is worth soaking up some of the building’s grandeur. Impressive rooms in the theater include the Royal Hall, where the king would drink his glass of champagne during the intermission, as well as the Ionic and the Mosaic Halls.
