State Theater of Lower Austria

The Lower Austrian State Theater (Landestheater Niederösterreich) is a theatre in St. Pölten, the state capital of Lower Austria.

In 1820, master architect Josef Schwerdtfeger turned a military jail on today’s town hall square into St. Pölten’s first permanent theater, which also served as a ballroom.Initially, the tenant was theatrical entrepreneur Leopold Hoch, who had previously operated in Hietzing.He and his wife were also members of the ensemble.On December 26, 1820, the new house was inaugurated with a dance performance, followed a day later by the inaugural theatrical performance.

The theater was sold to the city after being shuttered for financial reasons during the 1847/1848 season.Following the Ringtheater fire in 1881, the facility was decommissioned as a theater due to a lack of fire safety and was only used as a ballroom from then on.Only the outside walls of the ancient theater survived when the structure was totally reconstructed in 1893 according to plans by Heinrich Wohlmeyer.The Stadttheater reopened with a larger stage, an expanded orchestra room, and 500 seats.

The theater was shuttered for the 1927/28 season before being united with theaters in Baden, Krems, and Bruck a der Leitha to establish the Stadtebundtheater.It reopened in 1933 after closing in 1931, however it was solely a performance theater from 1935 to 1938.During WWII, the structure was utilized as SS barracks and storage, and the roof was finally destroyed by bombs.The theater reopened in 1948 and began acting and music theater operations, but it initially lacked a roof and was therefore forced to be open-air.

Between 1966 and 1969, the house was completely refurbished and enlarged according to Paul Pfaffenbichler’s ideas, reducing the auditorium’s capacity to 411 seats.The theater had a second location with the Theater auf der Probebühne (from 1975 “Studio der Zeit”) until its closing in 1986.The theater was refurbished in 1996, and a second venue with 120 seats was created in 2002 with the Theaterwerkstatt.

The stage was renamed the Theater of the State Capital of St. Pölten – Theater for Lower Austria in the 1990s.The theater has been in operation since the 2005/06 season.Since then, the house has been known as Landestheater Niederösterreich, which, as a one-off theatre, is exclusively characterized by straight theater.In the summer of 2012, the main building’s foyer and the theater café were rebuilt as modern additions to the historic atmosphere of the theater building.