Hamburg State Opera

This guide to Hamburg State Opera opens on a Hamburg street on the fifth of December, 1704, where nineteen-year-old George Frideric Handel refuses to give up his seat at the harpsichord to fellow composer Johann Mattheson, the bigger name in town. It follows the pair from the stage of Germany's first public opera house nearby on the Gänsemarkt out into a crowd-drawing street quarrel, swords drawn on both sides. The guide also traces the hall itself, firebombed in 1943 and rebuilt on the same ground in 1955.