Berlin State Opera
German opera house in Berlin
The Staatsoper Unter den Linden (lit. State Opera under the Lime Trees), also known as the Berlin State Opera (German: Staatsoper Berlin), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. Initially called the Königliche Oper (Royal Opera) or Berlin Hofoper (English: Berlin Court Opera), the opera house was built by order of Prussian king Frederick the Great from 1741 to 1743 according to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff in the Palladian style. Damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, the former Royal Prussian Opera House was rebuilt from 1951 to 1955 as part of the Forum Fridericianum square in East Berlin.
Nicknamed Lindenoper, it is "the world's oldest state opera" and "the first theater anywhere to be, by itself, a prominent, freestanding monumental building in a city."
History
Names
Originally called the Königliche Oper ('Royal Opera'), the company was renamed the Preußische Staatsoper ('Prussian State Opera') in 1919. After World War II it began operating as the national opera company for Communist East Germany, taking the name Deutsche Staatsoper ('German State Opera') in 1955.
In the West and colloquially, however, people used the name Staatsoper Unter den Linden ('State Opera Unter den Linden') after the boulevard on which the theatre sits. This usage became more common after the collapse of East Germany in 1990, but, contrary to the company's website, it was not officially adopted until 1995 and the old name still appeared on new recordings issued by the company as late as the following year.
Early years
King Frederick II of Prussia, shortly after his accession to the throne, commissioned the original building on the site. Though architecturally significant as an early example of the Palladian revival in Germany, the north and west façades are direct copies of Colen Campbell's elevations at Stourhead and Wanstead respectively.
The public source identifies “Berlin State Opera” as german opera house in Berlin. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Berlin, State and Opera.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q312576. Authority coordinates are 52.517, 13.395. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1741, 1743, 1951 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Berlin State Opera” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.