Three opera houses in Prague

These are the three main opera venues in Prague, Czechia:

  • The larger photo on the left shows The National Theater (Národní divadlo), which first opened in 1881. It currently seats 986 spectators. The opera I saw at the National Theater was Nápoj lásky (better known in Italian as L’elisir d’amore and in English as The elixir of love) by Gaetano Donizetti.
  • Upper right: the State Opera (Státní opera), which first opened in 1888 and currently seats 1041 spectators. At the State Opera I saw a performance of Aida by Giuseppe Verdi.
  • Lower right: the Estates Theater (Stavovské divadlo), which first opened in 1783 and currently has seats for 659 spectators, plus standing room for 20 to 40 more. I have not yet seen any operas at the Estates Theater, but hope to do so after the coronavirus pandemic is over.

My first visit to Prague was on the 10,959th day of my life, or so I used to think. Actually it was only the 10,958th day, as I have since determined by a simple calculation in Excel, but at that time Excel had not yet been invented, so I tried to figure it out by counting days in old calendars, taking leap years into account, etc.

In any case, I later described this day in a story that was published in a small magazine called The Remington Review. You can find this story here in a separate post in case you would like to have a look.

15,126 days later I returned to Prague and everything was different. The sun was shining, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist, digital photography had been invented, Czechoslovakia had broken up peacefully into two countries and I did not have the runs. I took some pictures of the State Opera on the way from the station to my hotel.

My photos in this post are from 2011. I revised the text in 2021.

See more posts on Prague, Czechia (Czech Republic).
See more opera posts.

7 thoughts on “Three opera houses in Prague”

  1. The sun was shining, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist, digital photography had been invented, Czechoslovakia had broken up peacefully into two countries and I did not have the runs.

    Absolutely brilliant. 😀

  2. I always know I can come here and have a fun adventure, see some gorgeous places, learn a lot, and step away, briefly, from the turmoil of our political world. Thanks, Don!

  3. Before we visited Budapest I looked at updated photos of the Opera with the pictures taken from behind the public, to see what people were wearing. We saw Don Giovanni, all looked like locals. Anyone who had a jacket took it off because of the heat.

  4. Very interesting Don. Your detail of the operas and theatres is cool and now I know the cultured secret of that VT name.
    Davesut

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