Festspielhaus

We had a staff event a few weeks ago where we got a tour of the Festival theaters.  It was a private tour because the Seminar and the Festival have a long history dating back to Reinhardt(obviously).

It was very cool.  Except of course they are doing construction in the Summer Riding School Theater(see Sound of Music theater) and we couldn't see it.  Bummer.  I was kinda looking forward to that.  I mean I'm not a huge SOM fan, but it's iconic.

But the other theaters were interesting too.  We saw the Haus fuer Mozart, and the main theater, as well as the Winter Riding school.
And if was fun to spend time with co-workers outside of work.

 

  This is the entrance hall of the Festspielhaus.  Some great images.

This is the Winter Riding School.  They used to have demonstrations and jousting for the Prince-Archbishop in here.  Which is why you have the wooden balconies.  The ceiling art depicts victories over the Turks.  A bit violent, but since they got as close as the Viennese gates, it's understandable.

 This is the Haus fuer Mozart.  Built in 2006 for putting on Mozart operas.  It's more in line with size of traditional opera houses during the 18th century, so perfect for staging his operas.  They were preparing for Don Giovanni when we were there.  It was so cool to see the forest and all the backstage stuff that goes into putting on the operas.

 After the opera house we trekked over to the main theater.   This is the only Iron Curtain still standing in Europe(the tour guide's joke).  It's over a meter thick and a fire could rage for two hours behind the curtain before getting to the stage and seats.

For the first and probably last time in my life I hit my mark on stage!  Now I understand theater blocking.

This is another prop for an opera.  It is a copy of a house in Vienna that was destroyed last century sometime.  The Festspiele has storage space issues, something I totally understand.  So they have to shove and be creative in where they put different props when some theaters are in use.  Plus there's the construction in the third one, so...less space than usual.
The tour was seriously cool.  Then we had sausages! Which is always a good thing.