General Information
- Opera house name :Opernfestspiele St Margarethen
- City, country :Sankt Margarethen in Burgenland Austria
- Localization :Kirchengasse 20 Open map
- Official website URL :http://www.ofs.at
Description
Located in the heart of Burgenland, Austria, the St. Margarethen quarry is one of the oldest quarries in Europe - its limestone, formed between 20 and 30 million years ago, has been quarried since Roman times 2,000 years ago (the Romans used the blocks to build the city of Carnuntum), and quarrying has continued throughout history, notably to build Vienna's St. Stephen's Cathedral and many of the emblematic palaces on the Ringstrasse.
After being an industrial site for several centuries, the St. Margarethen quarry changed its vocation in 1996 to become the site of an open-air opera festival with one of the largest natural stages in Europe, measuring around 7,000 m². Every summer, the St. Margarethen Festival presents a new opera production on this huge stage, often in a highly spectacular and pyrotechnic production that exploits the scale and characteristics of this exceptional natural setting.
The organisers, the Esterházy Foundation, see the site as a "natural forum for bringing together the peoples and cultures of East and West".
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