Theatre

<x-charset iso-8859-1>Hello all,

Of course Mimi is quite right! My eye was straying a little too high for
some reason. On the 1941 map, the Theatre is the building shown in black
directly above the
street named "Schiller". This street was the Schillergasse or Strada
Schiller in Romanian.

In Austrian times the theatre was known as the "Stadttheater". In front of
it there used to be a monument to Schiller. Curiously this seems to have
been removed by the Romanians, although his street was not renamed!

In Romanian times the theatre was the "Teatrul national".

Now it is the "Olga Kobilyanska Theatre of Music and Drama". Olga
Kobilyanska was a Ukrainian writer - incidentally, the
Herrengasse is now named after her.

My mother saw her first opera at the theatre, "Aida", when she was about 10,
(hence about 1933).

I found the following interesting information about the theatre on the
Internet:

"Built 1904-1905 as "Stadttheater" for the city of Czernowitz by Ferdinand
Fellner & Hermann Helmer. The design had been projected for Chernivtsi in
1900, but the project was put on hold for several years. Subsequently, the
plans were first used by Fellner & Helmer for the Stadttheater Fürth
(Germany) in 1901-1902. As the Chernivtsi project was taken up again, the
original plans were used with slight alterations. Hence, the theatres at
Chernivtsi and Fürth are very similar in appearance."

"Opened 3 October 1905 with Anton Norst's prologue "Der Musen Einzug",
Beethoven's ouverture "Die Weihe des Hauses", and Franz von Schönthan's
comedy "Maria Theresia". 813 seats. When Czernowitz became the Romanian
city of Cernauti, the theatre was renamed "Teatrul National" on 2 January
1922. Subsequently, the Schiller statue in front of the theatre was
removed. After Cernauti became Ukrainian, the theatre was renamed in honour
of the Ukrainian poet, Olga Kobylyanska whose statue is located in front of
the theatre today."

Fellner and Helmer built theatres in many of the main cities of the Empire.

The web reference for the above extract is
http://www.andreas-praefcke.de/carthalia/europe/ua_chernivtsi_teatr.htm
This web page also shows nice views of the theatre in 1930 and 1973. If you
follow a link you can find a reference which lists the Fellner and Helmer
theatres - it's rather interesting!

David



----- Original Message -----
From: Miriam R. Taylor <mtaylor_at_bio.indiana.edu>
To: <Czernowitz-L_at_cornell.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2003 5:48 AM
Subject: Theatre square


> Hello all,
>
> On the 1941 map theater square is directly bisected by the line which
> separates
> quadrants e from quadrants f horizontally and in quadrant D vertically.
The
> Romanian name is Piata Vasile Alexandri, the Austrian name is
Elisabethplatz.
> I do not know what either the Austrian or Romanian name of the theater
was.
> In 1944 or -45 it was renamed the " Ukrainian" theater and now it is named
I
> believe after a Ukrainian writer or actress whose name I forgot.
> Eventually we'll get it all right, Mimi
>
>
>

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Received on 2003-07-20 21:17:41