page_title: Musiktheater im Revier
section_title: Music theatre
hierarchical_section_title: Musiktheater im Revier / Music theatre
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Plastik von Norbert Kricke am kleinen Haus des Musiktheaters im Revier in Gelsenkirchen.
context_page_description: Musiktheater im Revier is the venue for performing opera, operetta, musical theatre and ballet in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. It opened on 15 December 1959; it is listed since 1997 as a protected cultural monument.
  The building offers two performance spaces: the Large House with 1,008 seats and about 200 performances per year, and the Small House with 336 seats and about 120 annual performances. In contrast to the building's outside cubic appearance, the auditoria use a more curved design.
context_section_description: When the theatre opened in 1959, it provided also for the spoken theatre, a typical German Drei-Sparten-Theater (three performing arts theater: opera, ballet, plays). Austerity measures in 1966/67 forced the abandonment of plays.
  Like most German municipal theatres (Stadttheater), the Musiktheater im Revier employs its own opera company and chorus and a ballet company under the direction of Bridget Breiner. The house orchestra is the Neue Philharmonie Westfalen, the largest of the three state orchestras in North Rhine-Westphalia. The orchestra is funded by the cities of Gelsenkirchen and Recklinghausen and the district of Unna. Johannes Kalitzke was chief conductor from 1984 to 1990. Heiko Mathias Förster is the current music director.
  In 1968, Bernd Alois Zimmermann's work Photoptosis was premiered at the Musiktheater im Revier. The first performance of Albert Lortzing's 1899 opera Regina which used the composer's original libretto took place at the MiR in 1998. On 10 October 2003, Alexander Mullenbach's chamber opera Die Todesbrücke (The Death Bridge) saw its premiere here. Enjott Schneider composed a musical for the occasion of the 100th anniversary in 2004 of the soccer team FC Schalke 04 (spoken: Schalke nullvier) which was premiered on 9 May 2004. The title Nullvier – Keiner kommt an Gott vorbei! with a double meaning was translated by the composer to Zerofour: Nobody comes past God, but might be rendered also as "04 – Nobody Outdribbles God!". The musical Strike Up the Band by George Gershwin saw its German premiere at the MiR in 2007 as had the German language production of his opera Porgy and Bess in 1970.
caption: Sculpture on the Small House by Norbert Kricke
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