Don Giovanni

Ovocný trh 1 Praha 1- Staré Město Phone: 224 901 448 http://www.narodni-divadlo.cz

About

The theatre was built by a liberal aristocrat, count František Antonín Nostic-Rieneck on his own Prague land plot with an approval of Emperor Joseph II. Thanks to the emperor’s support, the objections of the owners of the neighbouring houses, of the Charles University, and of the town council, the owner of the Theatre v Kotcích who was afraid of competition, were all void. The foundation stone was laid on the 7th June 1781. When digging the foundations, a small container was found with several silver coins, which was considered as a good sign. The building was realized in a Classicist style according to a project of architect Antonín Haffenecker, and together with the theatre in Leoven in Styria it is the only building in Europe preserved in nearly original state. The main front with a pair of pillars and high, half-round vaulted windows were probably realized in French Classicism. Count Nostic national theatre was festively opened on the 21st April 1783 with Lessing’s play Emilia Galotti. The count built the theatre for the Country and for the Muses, as the Latin inscription on the building declares: Patriae et Musis. The theatre’s founder was a great patriot, a German Prague citizen, who wished to pursue German drama and opera in the theatre, even if he sometimes allowed for Bohemian production. And so the first Bohemian performance was held here on the 20th January 1785, the Run-away from the love of son (author: Gottlieb Stefanie jr.) in the Czech translation of Karel Bulla. The first original Bohemian play staged was the historical drama with songs named Břetislav and Jitka by Václav Thám on the 10th January 1786. The theatre’s history is inseparably bound with the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who conducted his Marriage of Figaro in 1787. On the 29th October 1787, world premiere of the opera Don Giovanni was held here, which Mozart dedicated to the people of Prague. In the following years, other operas of Mozart were staged here. | When count Nostic died, the heir count Bedřich Nostic offered the theatre to the Bohemian Estates, who purchased it in 1798, and since then the theatre has been called the Royal Estates Theatre (Královské stavovské divadlo). The dramas were staged in German, the operas in German or Italian; Czech performances were only held on holidays and Sundays. On the 2nd February 1826, the first Czech opera Dráteník (Tinker) by František Škroup had its premiere here. In December 1828, famous violin virtuoso Paganini had six concerts in the theatre. On the 21st December 1834, the drama Fidlovačka by J. K. Tyl had its premiere here, in which Škroup’s song Kde domov můj (Where is my homeland) was sung for the first time, to become the national anthem later on. Czech plays were staged in the Estates Theatre until 1862, when the Provisional Theatre was built and the Czech theatre became independent. Then the Czech plays returned only in 1920, when the Czech actors occupied the Estates Theatre in violence during the first years of the Czech state’s existence. President Masaryk protested against such injustice by never entering the theatre anymore. On the 5th December 1920, the Estates Theatre was officially incorporated into the National Theatre. During occupation, the last Czech play to be staged here in July 1939 was Jirásek’s Lucerna (Lantern), and after the occupation, the same play Lucerna was the first to be staged in Czech again. In 1948, the theatre was renamed to Tyl’s Theatre and it became a permanent stage of the National Theatre’s dramatic segment. Mozart’s opera productions are home here by right. Since 1991, the historical name Estates Theatre (Stavovské divadlo) has been used again.The building’s interior decorations were originally designed by Jan Jakub Quirin Jahn; the curtain was made by Josef Bergler in 1804. The first modifications of the building were realized in 1859 by a builder K. Brust, others followed in 1881 - 82 by architect Achil
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