Theater Winterthur

Since the evening of 5 October 1979, when Die Zauberflöte inaugurated it, Winterthur's theatre has worked on an unusual principle: it keeps no company of its own. Frank Krayenbühl designed it expressly as a receiving house, and the building — under heritage protection since 2012 and regarded as his major work — has become the largest of its kind in Switzerland, taking in drama, dance and opera from abroad before audiences of some fifty-five thousand a year. The auditorium holds between 787 and 822, the figure varying with the size of the orchestra pit.

Importing is only half the practice. Co-productions with the Musikkollegium Winterthur, the city's own orchestra, return locally made music to a stage otherwise given over to visitors. Italian comedy has passed through in both its Rossinian and its Donizettian forms, L'italiana in Algeri and Don Pasquale among the works staged.