The Provisional Theatre opens

JAN 01 1862 · 12:00

The Provisional Theatre, period view by Bohumil Roubalík Place: Vltava embankment, Prague New Town Figures: Ignác Vojtěch Ullmann, architect · the committee for a National Theatre (still campaigning) The Czech-language theatre committee has been raising money for a permanent National Theatre since the 1840s. Every famine, every reaction, every bureaucratic delay pushes the building further into the future. By 1862 the campaign is twenty years old and the country needs a stage now, not eventually. The Provisional Theatre, Prozatímní divadlo, is built on the Vltava embankment in six months on a strip of land donated by the city. It seats eight hundred. The architect, Ignác Ullmann, designs a neo-Renaissance box with the proportions of a large concert hall. It opens on November 18, 1862, with a prologue by Vítězslav Hálek and Cherubini's overture to The Water Carrier. The German Estates Theatre, where Mozart had his Don Giovanni seventy-five years earlier, continues unaffected on its corner of the Old Town. Two stages, two languages, one city.