The Viennese firm Fellner & Helmer built the Stadttheater of 1891, changing their earlier Wiesbaden theater design only slightly. It replaced the Aktientheater, Zurich's first permanent theater, built in 1834 and destroyed by fire in 1890. The new building went up in 16 months. It was renamed Opernhaus Zürich in 1964.
The exterior is a neoclassical facade of white and grey stone, with busts of Weber, Wagner, Mozart, Schiller, Shakespeare and Goethe. The auditorium is neo-rococo, with about 1,100 seats. The article calls it the first opera house in Europe with electric lighting, a claim it attributes to another source.
The building was rebuilt from 1982 to 1984, and an adjoining building opened in December 1984. Youth protests in May 1980 responded to high opera subsidies. The article names no architect for the rebuilding and gives no dimensions or visiting details.
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