Burgtheater

The original Burgtheater was set up in a tennis court (called a 'ball house' at the time) that the Roman-German king and later emperor Ferdinand I had built in 1540 in the lower pleasure garden of the Hofburg after the old ball house fell victim to a fire in 1525.

The theater opened on 14 March 1741, the creation of the Habsburg Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who wanted a theater next to her palace. Her son, Emperor Joseph II, called it the "German National Theater" in 1776. Three Mozart operas premiered there: Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782), Le nozze di Figaro (1786), and Così fan tutte (1790), as well as his Piano Concerto No. 24 in C Minor (1786). Beginning in 1794, the theater was called the "K.K. Hoftheater nächst der Burg". Beethoven's 1st Symphony premiered there on 2 April 1800. The last performance, in October 1888, was of Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris. The theatre's small size provided it with exceptional acoustics, but it had long been unable to accommodate its growing audience. In 1884, one description noted that it was "neither remarkable by comfort, nor by elegance. The [auditorium], which is a great deal too small, can hardly contain the half of the spectators who should like to enter."

The theater's first building adjoined the Hofburg at Michaelerplatz, opposite St. Michael's Church. It was moved to a new building at the Ringstraße on 14 October 1888, designed by Gottfried Semper and Karl Freiherr von Hasenauer. The interiors of the new Burgtheater were decorated with frescoes by Gustav Klimt, Ernst Klimt, and Franz von Matsch, depicting theatrical history, from Sophocles's Antigone to Shakespeare's Globe Theatre as well as the drama of Molière.

In 1943, under Nazi rule, a notoriously extreme production of The Merchant of Venice was staged at the Burgtheater—with Werner Krauss as Shylock, one of several theater and film roles by this actor pandering to antisemitic stereotypes.

On 12 March 1945, the Burgtheater was largely destroyed in a United States Air Force bombing raid, and one month later, on 12 April 1945, it was further damaged by a fire of unknown origin. After the war, the theater was rebuilt between 1953 and 1955. The classic Burgtheater style and the Burgtheater-German language were groundbreaking for German-language theater.