[citation needed] Plans to build an opera house in Bielefeld were laid in 1885 by a foundation set up the widow of the founder of the Crüwell Tobacco Company.
[1] In addition to operas like Lohengrin, Così fan tutte, Der Rosenkavalier and Aida, several dramaturgical leitmotifs were to be found in the programming of the Opernwunder years of the Bruns era.
Publishers and opera house staff recreated lost orchestral materials for productions of Bohuslav Martinů's Julietta, Karol Rathaus' Fremde Erde, and Ernst Toch's Der Fächer.
German romantic operas that had been lost since the 19th century were given new life, thus the rediscovery of Robert Schumann's Genoveva, Louis Spohr's Faust and Carl Maria von Weber's Die drei Pintos for the operatic stage.
The Bielefeld Opera also produced a number of world premieres, including Nikolai Karetnikov's Till Eulenspiegel and Michael Hirsch's [de] Das stille Zimmer.