Estates Theatre

The Stavovske divadlo opened in 1783 and it is the only theatre in the world still standing in which Mozart personally conducted the premiere of one of his operas. Don Giovanni was written for Prague after the success of Figaro here, and Mozart conducted its first performance on 29 October 1787 from this pit; he returned in 1791 to conduct La clemenza di Tito, also premiered here. The auditorium survives with its horseshoe of boxes, though the building has been restored several times, most thoroughly in the 1980s. Milos Forman shot the opera sequences of Amadeus in it, in the actual room. The theatre also has a Czech first: the earliest performance in Czech on a public stage took place here in 1785, and Fidlovacka, the play containing the song that became the national anthem, premiered here in 1834. It is part of the National Theatre and plays regularly.

History

Prague's first public theatre, the Sporck Theatre, ran from 1724 to 1735, and the Kotzentheater, under Italian impresarios, played on and off from 1739 to 1783. It closed just as Count Franz Anton von Nostitz-Rieneck opened his own house, designed by Anton Haffenecker in the spirit of the Enlightenment and built in less than two years; it opened in 1783 with Lessing's tragedy Emilia Galotti under the motto Patriae et Musis, "to the native land and the muses", and it remains one of the few European theatres preserved almost as built. The Bohemian Estates bought it in 1798, giving it the name Royal Estates Theatre. When the Czech company moved to the new Provisional Theatre in 1862 it became a German-language theatre; from 1920 it was again the Estates Theatre and part of the National Theatre, from 1948 it was called the Tyl Theatre, and in 1990, at the end of an eight-year reconstruction, it took back the name Estates Theatre (Wikipedia, Estates Theatre).

The main sights

• Where Don Giovanni premiered - conducted by Mozart in this room in 1787.
• A horseshoe auditorium of 1783 - restored but the same space.
• The Amadeus location - Forman filmed the opera scenes here.
• The anthem's first performance - in Fidlovacka, premiered here in 1834.

When to go

All year, in the season. An evening.

Good to know

Some Don Giovanni performances here are aimed squarely at tourists and vary in quality - check what company is playing. Tours run on limited dates. The building is small and tickets go quickly.

Nearby

The old town square and the Municipal House are short walks away.

Key facts