Opera houses, concert halls, standing tickets and the New Year ballot — how to actually get into Vienna music, and what it costs.
Vienna is sold as the city of music, which is true and almost always explained badly. The useful fact is not that Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Mahler and both Strausses worked here. It is that the institutions they wrote for are still running, most nights of the week, and are cheaper to get into than nearly anyone expects.
The Staatsoper releases 567 standing places for every performance, from €13. Part of the allocation goes online at 10:00 Vienna time; the rest are sold at the Stehplatz window on the Operngasse side, which opens 80 minutes before curtain. Each standing place has its own subtitle screen at the rail.
The New Year's Concert cannot be bought at all. It is a ballot drawn on the Vienna Philharmonic's own site, with applications open only during February for the following year. Anyone selling you one outside that draw is selling you something else.
The halls are also daytime sights: the Staatsoper, the Musikverein's Goldener Saal, the Konzerthaus and the Theater an der Wien all run guided tours. The composers themselves are mostly at the Zentralfriedhof, Group 32A — a tram ride, and free to walk into. The full section guide.
How early should you queue for Staatsoper standing tickets? There is no single number. For an ordinary weeknight repertory opera, arriving 45 to 60 minutes before the standing-room window opens is usually enough. For a sold-out Sunday performance of a Verdi or Wagner core work, or a premiere, plan for three hours or more. The … Read more
The costumed Mozart-and-Strauss concerts and the Staatsoper are two different products. What each actually costs, and why a standing place is €13.
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