page_title: Alte Oper
section_title: Inauguration
hierarchical_section_title: Alte Oper / Inauguration
context_page_description: The original opera house in Frankfurt is now the Alte Oper, a concert hall and former opera house in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. It was inaugurated in 1880 but destroyed by bombs in 1944. It was rebuilt, slowly, in the 1970s, opening again in 1981. Many important operas were performed for the first time in Frankfurt, including Carl Orff's Carmina Burana in 1937.
  The square in front of the building is known as Opernplatz. The Alte Oper is located in the inner city district, Innenstadt, within the banking district Bankenviertel.
  The Oper Frankfurt now plays in the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt, completed in 1951, which it shares with the Schauspiel Frankfurt theatre company.
context_section_description: The building was designed by the Berlin architect Richard Lucae, financed by the citizens of Frankfurt and built by Philipp Holzmann. Construction began in 1873. It opened on October 20, 1880. Among the guests was Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, who was impressed and said: Das könnte ich mir in Berlin nicht erlauben. (I couldn't permit myself this sort of thing in Berlin.)
  The citizens of Frankfurt, who had to finance the structure (initial estimate two million marks), were rather sceptical at first. Alluding to the inscription on the frieze
  "Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten", ("To the true, the beautiful, the good")
  The folkloristic Frankfurt poet Adolf Stoltze wrote, in his best Hessian dialect:
  Dem Wahre, Scheene, Gute, die Berjerschaft muß blute. (To the true, the beautiful, the good, the citizenry must bleed.)
caption: Frankfurt opera house, c. 1880
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