Odeon

Odea, Odeon, or Odeum may refer to:

Modern era

Odeon (building)

Odeon is the name for several ancient Greek and Roman buildings built for music: singing exercises, musical shows, poetry competitions, and the like. The word comes from the Ancient Greek ᾨδεῖον, Ōideion, literally "singing place", or "building for musical competitions"; from the verb ἀείδω, aeidō, "I sing", which is also the root of ᾠδή, ōidē, "ode", and of ἀοιδός, aoidos, "singer".

Description

In a general way its construction was similar to that of an ancient Greek theatre, but it was only a quarter of the size and was provided with a roof for acoustic purposes, a characteristic difference. The prototype odeon was the Odeon of Pericles (Odeon of Athens), a mainly wooden building by the southern slope of the Acropolis of Athens. It was described by Plutarch as 'many-seated and many-columned' and may have been square, though excavations have also suggested a different shape, 208 x 62 feet. It was said to be decorated with the masts and spars of ships captured from the Persians. It was rebuilt by king Ariobarzanes after destruction by fire in the Mithridatic war.

Odeon (Munich)

The Odeon is a former concert hall in the Odeonsplatz in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, which is named after it. Built in the early 19th century to a design by Leo von Klenze and forming a counterpoint to the externally identical Palais Leuchtenberg, it was rebuilt after being almost totally destroyed in World War II and now houses the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior.

History

The Odeon was built in 1826–1828 on a commission from King Ludwig I of Bavaria and was originally a concert hall and ballroom. Klenze designed the exterior as an identical counterpart to that of the Palais Leuchtenberg, so that there was no outward indication of its function. The auditorium, which measured 75 by 125 feet (23 by 38 m) and seated 1,445, had two superimposed colonnades which provided access on the ground floor and a gallery with standing room, and a ceiling 50 feet (15 m) high with a skylight. The orchestra was accommodated in a semi-circular exedra, behind which in niches were busts by Johannes Leeb of the ten composers then considered most important in the history of music: Beethoven, Mozart, Gluck, Handel, Haydn, Vogler, Méhul, Weber, Cimarosa and Winter. The ceiling was decorated with frescoes in the Nazarene style: Apollo among the Muses by Wilhelm Kaulbach, Apollo among the Herdsmen by Adam Eberle and The Judgement of Midas by Hermann Anschütz. The hall, which has been called "one of the most extraordinary classical architectural solutions of the concert hall", had excellent acoustics and was popular with the public.