Opera: The Joys of Intermission

On Oct. 18, 1943, the heart of Munich was struck by a fire-bomb raid. The incendiaries that crashed through the 160-ft.-high roof of the National-theater ignited a fire that burned for three days, melting the crystal chandeliers, blackening what remained of the ornate bas-reliefs and frescoes, consuming even the ranks of ivory chairs. For nearly two decades, the ruins of the 125-year-old home of the Bavarian State Opera stood as a grim souvenir of the war, a macabre memorial to its own glorious past.

Last week elegant crowds gathered once more beneath the Nationaltheater’s grand portico for a night at the opera. A $20 million restoration project had converted the relic of one of Europe’s finest opera houses into what is very likely the best opera house in the world, and in an opening festival that will not end until New Year’s Eve, the general German mourning over the assassination of President Kennedy could cancel only a single night’s perform ance. Tickets sold quickly for as much as $125 a performance, and though a feeble Meistersinger drew grouchy reactions from the press, the patrons of opera who could afford to attend found the experience a joy reminiscent of la belle epoque.

Bewitched by Wagner. The passion ate and sentimental pride Münchners have always taken in their opera house stiffened Opera Director Rudolf Hartmann’s determination that it be rebuilt in conformity with its original style. Anticipating the likelihood of war damage, Munich had carefully disassembled the gold and white interior decorations of its Cuvilliés Theater before the bombs fell, so that when it was rebuilt in 1958, all its ornaments and trappings were intact. But inside its shell, the Nationaltheater was a chaos of terra-cotta rubble where grass and trees had begun to sprout.

In 1818, Duke Max Joseph, struck with the beauty of the Theatre de l’Odéon in Paris, had decreed that his court erect an improved replica; though Munich at the time had only 35,000 inhabitants, the theater was built to full Parisian scale, at a cost of 800,000 gold ducats—plus free building materials contributed by unenthusiastic peasants. Only five years after its opening, though, the building burned to the ground. Duke Max watched the blaze and wailed through his tears: “I won’t survive this loss—my theater, my beautiful theater!”

But Duke Max lived to see the opera house rebuilt, and by the time his grandson, mad King Ludwig, was on the Bavarian throne, productions there had reached such a pitch of grandeur that the world premiere of Tristan und Isolde was largely responsible for Prussia’s defeat of the Royal Bavarian Army in 1866; after the opera, there was no money left for the guns. The defeated Ludwig, bewitched by Wagner, staged three more premieres before he succumbed to a paranoid fear of crowds that kept him away from opening nights. “Each time I enter my box,” he said, “I feel as if a thousand needles stab me when I see all those binoculars turned at me.” The king’s therapy was truly regal: from 1872 until his death in 1886, he scheduled 209 performances at which, as sole spectator, he applauded madly and shouted “Bravo!” from his lonely box.

Every Known Playboy. The reconstructed opera house is also built for kings. Five bronze portals open onto marble-walled entrance halls that terminate in wide, marble staircases leading up to “gathering rooms” paneled in blue marble and mirrors, and lighted by crystal chandeliers that glimmer and glare like diamonds. The ivory, Bordeaux-red and gold auditorium is’banded by five galleries, and high above, in a luminous oval, is a crown chandelier made from 70,000 bits of polished glass.

A loft full of elevators, derricks, tracks and bridges has been built to the left of the deep stage so that whole stage sets can be whisked in and snatched away in seconds. The acoustics seem perfect. Said the Suddeutsche Zeitung: “There is a silkiness to the violins, a powerful but not overpowering force of the brass. The voices rise gloriously over the orchestra.”

The first audiences—which included ex-King Umberto of Italy, ex-Queen Soraya, the Begum Aga Khan, Krupps, Thyssens, Mellons and Rothschilds, flocks of princes and princesses and every known playboy in Europe—took their deepest pleasure in arriving spectacularly and departing gracefully. Relaxed intermissions were spent over swallow’s nest soup, Strasbourg pate de foie gras and Piper Heidsieck down in the lavish basement restaurant. The joys of intermission were so great, in fact, that operas that began at 5 o’clock did not end until almost midnight.