Zürich Opera House Open Day 2016-09-17

Hello everyone! Have you ever been to Zürich Opernhaus (Opera House)? If you have, have you ever been to the costume or stage property workshop? I guess most people haven’t. Well, then Zürich Opera House Open Day is a great opportunity for you to explore not only the theater, the performance, but also the back stage and workshops.

Each year, when the summer comes to an end, a new season begins at the Opera House with a great festival. For an entire day, you have the opportunity to explore what happens behind the stage and enjoy different performances. You can go to the studio, the stage property workshop, the costume department, ballet hall, mirror hall, the main stage and Bernhard theater. As always, the opening party is “open for all” and free of charge. The 3 picture below shows the program of this year and if you are interested, please have a look.

In my opinion, you should watch a performance on the main stage, visit the costume department, and also, take a look the stage property workshop (studio). If you have time, take a look at the Opernhaus (the mirror hall, the balcony) and Bernhard Theater.

Oh! Don’t forget to check the UBS and Credit Suisse pavilions. Usually they are the partners and offer some quite interesting activities for all the visitors. There’s a photo booth by UBS right in front of the opera house. You can get dressed in your favorite and chosen costume and they will take a photo of you and print it out immediately. You can also download it online later. It’s also free and the staff are super friendly. I feel it’s quite fun :). However, the line can be long sometimes and dressing up takes time, so I suggest that if you see the line is not bad, just join and have fun. :p

Now let’s have a look at what happened on the main stage, the costume department and the stage property workshop (studio), so next year you know what to expect. 🙂 (As my friend Julia told me, they change things from time to time , but the general picture is the same.)

The main Stage (Hauptbühne)

My friend Julia told me, last year you could just go in and visit the main stage whenever you want, but this year they somehow changed it and arrange quite some performances so you can only visit the main stage when you have a ticket to watch one of the performances. Oh! I forgot to mention, There are 5 pavilions in front of the opera house. The first one is the information desk and the other four are for giving out tickets. Remember, they only start giving out tickets one hour before the performance and the line can be quite long. If you don’t wanna be disappointed when you reach the ticket pavilion, I suggest you go half an hour before the ticket giving out time and line up. For some popular performances, I would say at least 1 hour. For example, for this year’s show “All Together” the line was basically surrounding the whole Sechseläutenplatz Square.

However, if you have never been to the main stage, I suggest that it’s worth it as it is so beautiful, so glorious, like a palace. There will be a lot of people lining up for the performance. Don’t worry, you will have your seat, just good or bad. 😛

If you’ve already been to the main stage and are not particularly interested in any of the programs, you can just get in the Opera house and visit the mirror hall and the balcony (you can see the whole Sechseläutenplatz and quite far from here). If you don’t wanna go to the main stage as the pics shown above, you don’t need to line up for tickets to enter the Opera House. This is my first time in Zürich Opera House and it is really impressive. The sculpture, the decorations etc. Wow!

The pictures shown below are the seat plan and various prices. If you are interested please click here to check the official website about the performances in the next days and online booking.

Costume Department

This is the place where the costumes are designed, tailored, dyed and decorated. After you enter you will see 5 rooms, 2 right in front of you (tailoring rooms for men and women), 1 room on your left (costume dying room) (you can also dye some pieces of fabric by yourself and keep it as souvenir during the open day), 2 rooms on your right (costume design room and costume decorating room).

You don’t need ticket to enter the open course of the costume department. However, the entrance is a little bit difficult to find. On the first page of the info leaflet, you can see a map and it show you where to go (next to Restaurant Belcanto, behind the bushes). Once you enter there will be staff and signs showing you where you go. 🙂

There will be staff in all the rooms explaining to you the procedures and all of them are very friendly. You can also see next to the dresses or accessories photos, which show what it looks when the performers are in them. One thing I noticed about this event is that there are a lot of staff around and they are more than happy to offer help, which makes the visit super convenient.

Stage Property Workshop

This is the place where stage properties are made and during this party, this place has been changed to a “children playground”. There are a lot of interactive activities that children can participate in. There are also guided tours for children, and every time I see this I wish I could say I’m 8 years old……as those activities really seem fun to me. Haha joking. But, yeah, I think this is a very good strategy to teach children about opera, not necessarily for performing but for the backstage work, mostly about art and design. If you have kids I think you should try to make it to the tour or simply take them in to have a look. I believe this is super fun to them. However, also be careful as the tools used for making chairs or beds or other large equipments are not necessarily very safe (at least to me).

This studio is open from 10:00 to 17:00 (time for different programs or tours might differ). However, it is actually not in or next to Opernhaus. you need to talk around 5 mins to Seerosenstrasse 4. If you can’t find it, just follow the yellow balloons (year 2016), they will guide you there.

Other Places You Might Wanna Have a Look

Bernhard Theater

Ballet Hall

These two places are all in the building between Opernhaus and Restaurant Belcanto. If you’re interested you can go in and have a look when there are no performances.

So that’s what I saw today during the Opernhaus Open Festival. If you are interested you can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, WeChat, or subscribe to my website, next year before it happens again I’ll post notification on them so you can join. So see you next year!

 

 

Zürich Opera House Open Day 2016-09-17 was last modified: September 18th, 2016 by Dong

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