Oper Frankfurt

Opened in 1782, the Comoedienhaus was the first permanent venue of the Frankfurt Theater (drama and opera).[2] In 1878 German violinist Willy Hess took up the leadership of the Oper Frankfurt. He resigned from that post in 1886 to take up a professorship in the Rotterdam Conservatorium voor Muziek.[3]

The first representative opera house of the city was inaugurated in Frankfurt in 1880 at Opernplatz. Under the direction of the first Intendant Emil Claar and the first Kapellmeister Felix Otto Dessoff, the house was opened with Mozart's opera Don Giovanni.[4]

During the 1920s the opera in Frankfurt had more prominent Jewish singers than any other company in Germany, including the tenor Hermann Schramm, bass Hans Erl (the first King in Schreker's Der Schatzgräber), baritone Richard Breitenfeld and contralto Magda Spiegel, who also toured with Frankfurt Opera performing Wagner in the Netherlands. These singers were forced to leave the opera in June 1933, though the opera's director Hans Meissner was able to persuade the mayor to speak up for Schramm, who had a non-Jewish wife. Orff's Carmina Burana was premiered at Oper Frankfurt in 1937.[5] Jewish members of the opera company among those rounded up at 9 November 1938 at the Festhalle Frankfurt, where Erl sang In diesen Heilgen Hallen, from the Magic Flute for the deportees. Members of Frankfurt Opera were sent to Auschwitz and other camps where they perished. Schramm survived, living to testify against the Frankfurt Gestapo officer Heinrich Baab in 1951.

The opera house was damaged in an air raid in January 1944, and then almost completely destroyed in March. After the war money was tight.[6] A new house for opera and play was built, completed in 1963 at the Theaterplatz (now Willy-Brandt-Platz).

From 1977 to 1987 Frankfurt Opera was led by Michael Gielen.[7][8][9][10] This decade became known as the "Gielen Era",[11] notable for the music of a conductor who was also a composer, and directors including Ruth Berghaus and Hans Neuenfels, whose productions of standard works such as Verdi's Aida and Wagner's Ring Cycle were thought-provoking. Operas which received their world premieres at the house were also performed again, including Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten.[11]

The stage of the opera house was destroyed by a fire in November 1987.[12] The opera house was rebuilt and opened in April 1991.[12] Many famous singers started their career with the company, including Franz Völker, Edda Moser, Cheryl Studer and Diana Damrau, and many established artists have been engaged there in recent seasons including Christian Gerhaher, whose roles here have included Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and his first Wolfram in Wagner's Tannhäuser, Piotr Beczała in Massenet's Werther and Jan-Hendrik Rootering in Wagner's Parsifal.

Music Director, since 2008, is Sebastian Weigle, General Manager, since 2002, Bernd Loebe. Weigle's new productions there have included Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten, Daphne and Arabella, Korngold's Die tote Stadt, Reimann's Lear and Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauß. He has also conducted performances of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, Beethoven's Fidelio, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal for the company.[13] He performed the four parts of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, staged by Vera Nemirova, finishing with Götterdämmerung in 2012.[14] The complete cycle was performed twice in 2012.[15]

In 2017, Debussy's cantata La Damoiselle élue and Honegger's dramatic oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher were combined, staged by Àlex Ollé, conducted by Marc Soustrot, and co-produced with the Teatro Real Madrid.[16]

Oper Frankfurt was voted 1996, 2003, 2015, 2018 and 2020 "Opera House of the Year" by the magazine Opernwelt.[17][18]