Vienna State Opera

The Vienna State Opera was the very first building completed on the Ringstrasse, and its architects didn't live to enjoy it. August Sicard von Sicardsburg and Eduard van der Nüll designed the Renaissance Revival masterpiece, but Viennese critics savaged it before it was even finished — mocking it as a "sunken trunk" because the newly raised street level made it look shorter than intended. Van der Nüll hanged himself. Sicardsburg died of tuberculosis ten weeks later. Emperor Franz Joseph, horrified that his opinions had contributed to the criticism, reportedly never gave a firm aesthetic judgement again, instead using the diplomatic phrase: "It was very nice, I enjoyed it very much."

The opening night on May 25, 1869, featured Mozart's Don Giovanni before an audience that included the Emperor and Empress Elisabeth. The 1,709-seat auditorium became the gold standard for opera houses worldwide — a place where Gustav Mahler served as director from 1897 to 1907 and where Richard Strauss conducted premieres that reshaped modern music.

On March 12, 1945, American bombs hit the building. The fire destroyed the auditorium, the stage, and nearly 150,000 costumes and props for over 120 productions. For ten years, the company performed in exile at the Theater an der Wien. The reopening on November 5, 1955, with Beethoven's Fidelio under Karl Böhm, was broadcast on Austrian television and became a symbol of the nation's post-war rebirth — as deliberate and emotional a statement as any aria ever sung inside.

Today, standing-room tickets cost as little as four euros. The opera sells roughly 600,000 tickets per season across 350 performances, making it one of the busiest opera houses on the planet.