The Margravial Opera House or Margrave's Opera House is a Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 opera house

Opera house

An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building...

 in the town of Bayreuth in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

. It is one of Europe's few surviving theatres of the period and has been extensively restored. It was built between 1744 and 1748 by Joseph Saint-Pierre; the interior was designed by Giuseppe Galli Bibiena and his son Carlo of Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 in the late Baroque style. Princess Wilhelmine of Prussia, wife of the Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth

Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth

Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth , was a member of the House of Hohenzollern and Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth....

, participated here as writer, player, composer, actor and director. Today she features in a sound-and-light presentation for tourists.

The stage's great depth (27 metres)http://www.bayreuth.de/tourism/tourist_information/attractions_364.html attracted Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

, who later had his Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

The or Bayreuth Festival Theatre is an opera house north of Bayreuth, Germany, dedicated solely to the performance of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner...

 built north of the town.

Each September from the year 2000 to 2009, the theatre hosted the Bayreuther Baroque festival, with performances of early operatic rarities. The 2009 festival included performances of Andrea Bernasconi

Andrea Bernasconi

Andrea Bernasconi was an Italian composer. He began his career in his native country as a composer of operas. In 1755 he was appointed to the post of Kapellmeister at the Bavarian court in Munich where he produced several more operas successfully and a few symphonies. After 1772 his compositional...

's festa teatrale, L'Huomo, to a libretto by the Margravine Wilhelmine.

The theatre closed in 2010 for extensive refurbishment and redevelopment, a process which is expected to take several years to complete.

External links

• Official Information (English)
• Information on the annual Bayreuther Barock Festival held in the opera house