VIENNA STATE OPERA HOUSE (WIENER STAATSOPER)

www.wiener-staatsoper.at

The Wiener Staatsoper is one of the most prestigious theatre in the World.

The Opera commenced in 1861 and was completed in 1869.

NUREYEV AND THE WIENER STAATSOPER

Nureyev had very special links with this theatre : It was here that he created his first version of "Swan Lake" in 1964 with Margot Fonteyn. They set an absolute record, one which is included in the Guinness Book of Records, for the number of curtain calls at a ballet, on the first night of the ballet which was on the 15th October 1964. It was also with this ballet that Nureyev said his goodbyes to the theatrical stage on the 26th March 1988, just after his fiftieth birthday. The people of Vienna lent him their theatre so that he could earn his spurs as a choreographer producing "Tancredi" to the music of Hans Werner Henze in 1966. He restaged "Don Quixote" in 1966, then "Sleeping Beauty" in 1980, and "Raymonda" in 1985. Nureyev danced classical ballets as well as "Apollon", "Pierrot Lunaire", and ballets by Hans Van Manen and Rudi Van Dantzig in the Wiener Staatsoper all throughout his career. The repertoire of the Vienna State Opera still, to this day, contains several of Nureyev's great productions.