Its directors will only admit it gnashing their teeth: Vienna’s State Opera is internationally best known for the annual Opera Ball, one of Austria’s most popular society events, for which celebrities, politicians and parvenus gather to waltz in the 1869-finished Neo-Renaissance building on the Ringstraße boulevard. The architecture of the Opera House was heavily criticised from the start of its construction, which drove one of the two architects to commit suicide before the building was completed. As so often the Viennese eventually got used to it and today the State Opera is one of the main sights of Vienna. After heavy destruction caused by bombings during World War II the building was reconstructed as it had been before and reopened in 1955. In its 140-year-history famous conductors such as Herbert Von Karajan, Gustav Mahler and Riccardo Muti have worked there with nothing less acclaimed singers and orchestras. The State Opera is traditionally closely linked to the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Opera enthusiasts still don’t have to spend a fortune for attending one of the approximately 200 productions per year. Tickets for the standing room start at 3 Euro; rumours say that the most critical audience is to be found there.

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