Description of the attraction
At the Kornhausbrücke bridge, you can see the compact building of the Bern City Theater, erected in a neoclassical manner at the beginning of the 20th century.
In 1766, young members of the Grande Société in Bern set up a company to build a city theater. In 1767, she was allowed to build a coffee shop with dance and concert halls. Three years later, the architect Niklaus Sprungli built a building called the Hotel de Musique. It began to be used for theatrical performances, since it had a room that could simultaneously accommodate 800 people, 400 of whom stood. From 1798 to 1800, the French occupation banned the performance of any plays on stage. Until 1862, only invited theater and acrobatic troupes performed on the stage of the Hotel de Musique. Moreover, this building has long been called the "City Theater". At the end of the 19th century, the Hotel de Musique was in need of immediate reconstruction, so the city authorities decided to build a new building for the theater. The Hotel de Music still exists today: it houses the Du Theater restaurant.
They decided to build the city theater on the site of the old riding school. The construction began in 1896, and after 7 years the premiere of Richard Wagner's opera "Tannhäuser and the Singers' Competition in Wartburg" took place in the theater building. At that time, the theater had 940 seating and 160 standing seats. A special company was created to manage the theater, which soon went bankrupt. The city of Bern in 1917 took the theater together with the debts of the theater company on its own balance sheet and founded a foundation, which after 10 years was transformed into the theater cooperative that still exists today. In 1920, an artistic director appeared at the theater. Another person was in charge of financial matters.
Opera, drama and ballet are staged on the stage of the theater. During the existence of the theater, many famous performers have performed here.
