Zurich Opera House
opera house
The Zurich Opera House (German: Opernhaus Zürich) is an opera house in the Swiss city of Zurich. Located at the Sechseläutenplatz, it has been the home of the Zurich Opera since 1891, and also houses the Bernhard-Theater Zürich. It is also home to Ballett Zürich.
It received the "Opera Company of the Year" award at the 2014 International Opera Awards.
History
The first permanent theatre in Zurich, the Aktientheater, was built in 1834 and it became the focus of Richard Wagner’s activities during his period of exile from Germany.
The Aktientheater burnt down in 1890. The new Stadttheater Zürich (municipal theatre) was built by the Viennese architects Fellner & Helmer, who changed their previous design for the theatre in Wiesbaden only slightly. It was built in only 16 months and was opened in 1891 and became the first opera house in Europe to have electrical lighting.
It was the city's main performance space for drama, opera, and musical events until 1925, when the Bernhard Theater was built for separate plays. Opening in 1941, the Esplanada building was demolished in May 1981, and the present adjoint building opened on 27/28 December 1984 after three years of transition in the department store building at the nearby Schanzengraben.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Zurich Opera House” is opera house. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Zurich, Opera and House, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “opera house” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q670406. Authority coordinates are 47.365, 8.547. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1891, 2014, 1834 and 1890.
Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Zurich Opera House” 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.