The need to build a municipal summer theater became fully apparent in 1956, when the first Music Summer (later the Piešťany Festival) drew attention to the significant lack of cultural venues in Piešťany. The following year, architect Milan Maximilián Scheer presented a design for an amphitheater near the Váh River.
The theater was designed to accommodate 2,800 spectators and to allow opera companies to perform and large vocal-symphonic works to be presented. Scheer worked on the design as the winner of a public architectural competition for the center of Piešťany in 1955. He invited architect Jaroslav Rajchl to collaborate on the project, and together they created a timeless, site-specific architectural work for Piešťany.
The architects designed the spatially sensitive composition of the amphitheater with a view to preserving fragments of the original floodplain forest. The massive deciduous trees, which had stood in their place for more than a century, organically overgrew the auditorium and stage, naturally completing the scene for cultural events and providing shade for the audience. The auditorium was complemented by a monolithic cantilevered grandstand covering the ground floor with facilities for visitors. Metal prefabricated elements on the front of the ground floor and steel railings on the grandstand visually lightened the massive concrete structure. The facilities for performers were located in a partially sunken structure opposite the stage with a grass roof.
After the opening of the impressive Slovak Philharmonic House of Arts in the immediate vicinity in 1980, use of the amphitheater declined significantly. The harmonious relationship between architecture and the natural environment was subsequently disrupted by time, insufficient maintenance, and gradual vandalism. This exceptionally valuable building in the city park has been falling into disrepair for several decades.
Bibliography:
Projekt 1994, 36(5), s. 65 – 67.
Revue Piešťany. V Piešťanoch: Mestský národný výbor, 1990, 26(9), p. 12. ISSN 1210-1958.
