Alte Oper - Inauguration

Inauguration

The building was inaugurated on October 20, 1880. It was designed by the Berlin architect Richard Lucae and financed by the citizens of Frankfurt. Among the invited guests was Kaiser Wilhelm I of Germany, who was impressed and stated, Das könnte ich mir in Berlin nicht erlauben. (I couldn't permit myself this sort of thing in Berlin.)

The citizens of Frankfurt, who had to finance the structure (initially projected at a cost of two million marks), were rather skeptical in the beginning. Alluding to the inscription on the frieze

"Dem Wahren, Schönen, Guten", ("To the true, the beautiful, the good")

Frankfurt poet Adolf Stoltze rhymed in his best Hessian dialect:

Dem Wahre, Scheene, Gute, die Berjerschaft muß blute. (To the true, the beautiful, the good the citizenry must give its blood.)