Paid for by public subscription as a statement that Czech was a language worth building a theatre for, burned down weeks after opening, and rebuilt by public subscription again in two years.
Built twice
In the mid-nineteenth century, Czech was the language of servants and villages; German was the language of Prague’s public life. The campaign to build a Czech-language national theatre was therefore a political act, and it was funded by public subscription — collections in villages across Bohemia, from people who would never see it.
The foundation stones were brought from sites across the Czech lands. It opened in June 1881 with Smetana’s Libuše.
Six weeks later it burned down.
The response was immediate: a new subscription raised the money in forty-five days, and the theatre reopened in November 1883, again with Libuše. The motto over the stage reads Národ sobě — the nation to itself.
That story is not a footnote here. It is the reason the building matters and why Czechs talk about it the way they do.
The building
Neo-Renaissance, with a gilded roof, a chariot group over the attic and an interior decorated by the “National Theatre generation” of Czech artists — Aleš, Ženíšek, Hynais.
The ceiling, the curtain by Hynais, and the foyer are the things to look at, and you look at them by buying a ticket to something rather than on a tour, which is the better arrangement.
Going
Three companies — opera, ballet and drama — perform across four venues, and the drama is in Czech.
For a visitor: opera and ballet need no language. Czech opera is the reason to go — Smetana’s The Bartered Bride, Dvořák’s Rusalka, Janáček’s Jenůfa and The Cunning Little Vixen. Seeing Rusalka in the house it was written for is a genuinely different experience from seeing it anywhere else.
Tickets are cheap. The upper balcony costs very little, and even good stalls seats are a fraction of western European prices. Book on the theatre’s own site.
Dress is whatever you like. Czechs dress up more than most, and nobody minds if you do not.
The other houses
The State Opera (Státní opera), a few hundred metres from the top of Wenceslas Square, reopened in 2020 after a long restoration and is the most opulent interior of the three. It was the German-language theatre, which is the other half of the story.
The Estates Theatre (Stavovské divadlo), a beautiful eighteenth-century house near the Old Town Square, where Mozart conducted the premiere of Don Giovanni in 1787. It is still used, and Don Giovanni is still staged in it, which is about as direct a connection to a composer as any city offers.
The Rudolfinum on the river is the concert hall — home of the Czech Philharmonic and the main venue of the Prague Spring festival in May.
What to avoid
The men in Mozart costume selling concert tickets on the street around the Old Town Square. Those concerts are real but they are short tourist programmes in small churches at high prices, and they are not the city’s musical life. Buy from the theatre, the Rudolfinum or the Municipal House instead.
