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For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions. Children are a great audience: open, curious, enthusiastic. They miss neither curtain nor orchestra pit and have no fixed idea of how an audience should behave. They are born explorers. And two musicians accompany them on their musical-theatrical voyage of discovery. Together they ask themselves: How are sounds created? What is music made of? Who or what is this mysterious TIRILI? For "Expedition TIRILI" we worked together with children from the Kastanienallee day-care centre in cooperation with TUKI. In the run-up, we experimented with sounds and themes in the nursery. This process flowed into the development of the production.

January 25, 2025

Expedition Tirili

Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 10:30

For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions. Children are a great audience: open, curious, enthusiastic. They miss neither curtain nor orchestra pit and have no fixed idea of how an audience should behave. They are born explorers. And two musicians accompany them on their musical-theatrical voyage of discovery. Together they ask themselves: How are sounds created? What is music made of? Who or what is this mysterious TIRILI? For "Expedition TIRILI" we worked together with children from the Kastanienallee day-care centre in cooperation with TUKI. In the run-up, we experimented with sounds and themes in the nursery. This process flowed into the development of the production.

Expedition Tirili

Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 12:00

For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions. Children are a great audience: open, curious, enthusiastic. They miss neither curtain nor orchestra pit and have no fixed idea of how an audience should behave. They are born explorers. And two musicians accompany them on their musical-theatrical voyage of discovery. Together they ask themselves: How are sounds created? What is music made of? Who or what is this mysterious TIRILI? For "Expedition TIRILI" we worked together with children from the Kastanienallee day-care centre in cooperation with TUKI. In the run-up, we experimented with sounds and themes in the nursery. This process flowed into the development of the production.

Macbeth

Sat, Jan 25, 2025, 18:00

About the work MACBETH was the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be set to music by Verdi, in 1847. Despite his decades of interest in the English playwright, he did not adapt another work of Shakespeare’s until late in his career. Verdi’s operatic rendition of this tale of murky prophecies and bloody struggles for the throne of Scotland came in the hugely productive decade that Verdi himself came to refer to as his »galley slave years«. Still striving for critical recognition, he turned out a string of operas that expanded on the bel canto genre. MACBETH was part of an evolution in Italian opera, a development that was even more evident in the modified version released in 1865. In typical fashion Verdi roughened up the storyline and injected some emotional twists and turns, intensifying the drama in the process and creating a tense momentum that sends the protagonists hurtling towards their respective gruesome ends. About the production Following on from her triumphs with BABY DOLL and NEGAR in the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and her recent productions at the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Semperoper Dresden, the MusikTheater an der Wien and La Monnaie in Brüssel, Marie-Ève Signeyrole returns to the venue on Bismarckstrasse for her first staging of a new production on the main stage. Verdi’s hard-hitting Shakespearean tragedy provides the perfect material for the arresting visuals that are a hallmark of the French director, whose aesthetic vision can hold its own with any modern cinematic blockbuster.

January 26, 2025

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Sun, Jan 26, 2025, 17:00

About the work According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up. About the production Tobias Kratzer has chosen this monumental fantasy opera to close his cycle of Strauss works at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Where ARABELLA explores how hard it can be to even start a relationship based on equal rights and INTERMEZZO depicts what can happen in a marriage that has gone stale, in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Kratzer focuses on the challenge of rekindling a bond that has weakened through years of poor nurturing – an approach that extends far beyond the domestic sphere due to the ethical issues surrounding surrogate motherhood.

January 27, 2025

Rigoletto

Mon, Jan 27, 2025, 19:30

About the work “As for the effect that a work has as a piece of theatre, I’d say that RIGOLETTO is the best material that I’ve ever set to music […]. It has very powerful scenes, there’s temperament, pathos, a lot of variety.” [Verdi to Antonio Somma, 22nd April 1853] In describing the attributes of his 1851 melodrama based on Victor Hugo’s acclaimed play “Le roi s’amuse” Verdi also puts his finger on the challenges that any director has to address: RIGOLETTO is namely a masterpiece whose particularity lies in the clash between the characters’ psychology and the improbable action of a fantasy storyline. It’s a tale that smacks of gothic horror. In his role as court jester to the Duke of Mantua, the hunchbacked Rigoletto is despised by the collected courtiers and in return makes fun of all the men whose wives have been ravished by his boss, a notorious womaniser. So nervous is he that his own daughter, Gilda, might fall victim to the Duke that he conceals her very existence. Finally Rigoletto realises that his attempt to preserve the cocoon of his family life is doomed to fail in this environment of wanton violence. Gilda is seduced too by the Duke, even laying down her life for him. It is Verdi’s music that gives the story its emotional credibility and makes RIGOLETTO a tragedy that unfurls as a result of the interaction of three very different people – the Duke, a rake for whom Verdi wrote such seductive music that Gilda and the audience alike are swept up in his aura; Rigoletto, one of those typical Verdi creations who have good and bad sides to them; and finally Gilda, a pristine personification of innocence and sympathy. In RIGOLETTO we identify especially with these three people and come to view even the craziest chance incidents as the characters’ inescapable destiny. About the production In his first opera production in Berlin, Jan Bosse too was attracted by this exploitation of musical theatre to maximum effect. In his production Bosse transforms the auditorium ...

January 28, 2025

The Magic Flute

Tue, Jan 28, 2025, 19:30

About the work It’s the most performed opera in the German-speaking region, an unusual – and masterly – blend of Viennese folk theatre and fairy tale, mythology and freemasonry mystique: Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE remains a puzzle to this day. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder switch horses from the Queen of the Night to Sarastro half way through? Is the message not one of distrust towards a supposedly infallible priesthood and its simplistic good-versus-evil ideology? Are some Mozart experts right when they talk of a disconnect between text and music? Whatever the answer, it’s the music that allows us to relate to the story’s contradictions. Far from denouncing the characters, it confers an existentiality on their conflicts. Tamino is rescued from a dragon by three mysterious women, who show him a picture of Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, who has been kidnapped by Sarastro, high priest of the Temple of the Sun. Besotted with the picture, Tamino is instructed by the Queen to team up with Papageno to rescue her. For a talisman he is given a magic flute, Papageno some magic bells. When they fail to steal Pamina back, the three of them are subjected to a series of perilous ordeals. Firstly, the men must prove they can keep silent. With Tamino not speaking to her, Pamina is about to stab herself but is saved by the three boy spirits, who lead her to Tamino. The pair then pass the remaining ordeals by fire and water. Meanwhile Papageno has acquired a lady friend, with whom he dreams of living happily ever after. Tamino and Pamina are inducted into the brotherhood of the Enlightened and embrace the ideals of nature, wisdom and reason. About the production The Günter Krämer production focuses on the antithesis between two worlds, represented in THE MAGIC FLUTE by sun versus moon and dark versus light but also by the oppositions of nature versus culture and male versus female. These double-sided coins are visualised on stage as the contrast between black ...

January 30, 2025

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Thu, Jan 30, 2025, 18:00

About the work According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up. About the production Tobias Kratzer has chosen this monumental fantasy opera to close his cycle of Strauss works at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Where ARABELLA explores how hard it can be to even start a relationship based on equal rights and INTERMEZZO depicts what can happen in a marriage that has gone stale, in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Kratzer focuses on the challenge of rekindling a bond that has weakened through years of poor nurturing – an approach that extends far beyond the domestic sphere due to the ethical issues surrounding surrogate motherhood.

February 1, 2025

Turandot

Sat, Feb 1, 2025, 18:00

About the work A nation is cowed by its princess. Turandot, beautiful and fascinating representative of a royal dynasty, presides over a gruesome ritual: only her marriage to a suitor will bring an end to the violence, but no would-be bridegroom has yet managed to solve the riddles. The same old spectacle plays out, ending in yet another execution, until Calaf, the son of a deposed ruler from a foreign land, unexpectedly answers the riddles correctly. He then turns the tables on Turandot, forcing her to answer his own question if she wants to steal out of her obligation. Puccini’s times are changing rapidly, the art world is going through drastic transformation and new, abstract forms are being coined to reflect modern-day experience. And the composer, in his early 60s, is again trying to break new ground. Puccini spent the last four years of his life working on TURANDOT, based on a fairy tale by Carlo Gozzi [1762]. The score was his richest and altogether most dissonant. Far from being the soundtrack to a cutesy picture of a doll-like China, the exotic music provided the backdrop to a world suffused in an atmosphere of unimaginable cruelty. Try as he might, Puccini never did settle on a resolution to his drama. The composer who was ever leery of happy endings never managed to escape from the dead-end that he’d created for himself through Liù’s sacrifice and the imminent pairing of Turandot and Calaf. The question of how the two might ever discover some common ground remained unanswered. Puccini was variously intrigued and repelled by the idea of presenting of an all-encompassing love as a means to redemption in the face of everything that speaks against it – and could not bring himself to paint such a utopia. He left only a fragment behind when he died and the Ricordi publishing house brought in the composer Franco Alfano to complete the opera, based on sketches left behind by Puccini. About the production Lorenzo Fioroni’s production sets the action of the story ...

February 2, 2025

‘Masses’ by Ed Atkins

Sun, Feb 2, 2025, 11:00

Ed Atkins is particularly attracted to the costumes from the Deutsche Oper Berlin's collection: the masses of different fabrics are lined up in dense rows on sober clothes rails like a compressed store of stories and memories. Each individual item of clothing would tell its own story if you took it off the rail: about the opera in which it was used, about the people who wore it and about the dreams it triggers in anyone who looks at it. For him, this analogue part of his installation forms a counterpart to his video installations, which stage fragments of stories from today's flood of images from digital media, some whimsical, some disturbing. This tension between costumes, opera stories and contemporary films forms the narrative core of Ed Atkins‘ work as a visual and narrative artist – at the same time, he is a contributor to the libretto of Rebecca Saunders’ world premiere LASH on 20 June 2025 on the stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Ed Atkins is one of the most versatile British artists of his generation and has attracted international attention as a visual artist, writer, and filmmaker. Atkins lives and works in Copenhagen. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include ‘Refuse’ at Tank, Shanghai (2022), ‘Get Life / Love's Work’ at the New Museum, New York (2021), as well as exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Bregenz and K21 Düsseldorf (both 2019), at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, at the MMK Frankfurt and DHC/ART in Montréal (all 2017), at Castello di Rivoli and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, at The Kitchen New York, SMK Copenhagen (all 2016), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2015), The Serpentine Gallery London (2014), Julia Stoschek Collection Düsseldorf (2013) and MoMA PS1 (2012). Atkins was included in the 56th and 58th Venice Biennales, the 13th Lyon Biennale, and Performa 13 and 19. An anthology of Ed’s texts, ‘A Primer for Cadavers’, was published by Fitzcarraldo in 2016, and an extensive artist’s monograph from Skira was released in 2017. An epic ...

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Sun, Feb 2, 2025, 17:00

About the work According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up. About the production Tobias Kratzer has chosen this monumental fantasy opera to close his cycle of Strauss works at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Where ARABELLA explores how hard it can be to even start a relationship based on equal rights and INTERMEZZO depicts what can happen in a marriage that has gone stale, in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Kratzer focuses on the challenge of rekindling a bond that has weakened through years of poor nurturing – an approach that extends far beyond the domestic sphere due to the ethical issues surrounding surrogate motherhood.

February 5, 2025

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Wed, Feb 5, 2025, 18:00

About the work According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up. About the production Tobias Kratzer has chosen this monumental fantasy opera to close his cycle of Strauss works at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Where ARABELLA explores how hard it can be to even start a relationship based on equal rights and INTERMEZZO depicts what can happen in a marriage that has gone stale, in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Kratzer focuses on the challenge of rekindling a bond that has weakened through years of poor nurturing – an approach that extends far beyond the domestic sphere due to the ethical issues surrounding surrogate motherhood.

February 7, 2025

Turandot

Fri, Feb 7, 2025, 19:30

About the work A nation is cowed by its princess. Turandot, beautiful and fascinating representative of a royal dynasty, presides over a gruesome ritual: only her marriage to a suitor will bring an end to the violence, but no would-be bridegroom has yet managed to solve the riddles. The same old spectacle plays out, ending in yet another execution, until Calaf, the son of a deposed ruler from a foreign land, unexpectedly answers the riddles correctly. He then turns the tables on Turandot, forcing her to answer his own question if she wants to steal out of her obligation. Puccini’s times are changing rapidly, the art world is going through drastic transformation and new, abstract forms are being coined to reflect modern-day experience. And the composer, in his early 60s, is again trying to break new ground. Puccini spent the last four years of his life working on TURANDOT, based on a fairy tale by Carlo Gozzi [1762]. The score was his richest and altogether most dissonant. Far from being the soundtrack to a cutesy picture of a doll-like China, the exotic music provided the backdrop to a world suffused in an atmosphere of unimaginable cruelty. Try as he might, Puccini never did settle on a resolution to his drama. The composer who was ever leery of happy endings never managed to escape from the dead-end that he’d created for himself through Liù’s sacrifice and the imminent pairing of Turandot and Calaf. The question of how the two might ever discover some common ground remained unanswered. Puccini was variously intrigued and repelled by the idea of presenting of an all-encompassing love as a means to redemption in the face of everything that speaks against it – and could not bring himself to paint such a utopia. He left only a fragment behind when he died and the Ricordi publishing house brought in the composer Franco Alfano to complete the opera, based on sketches left behind by Puccini. About the production Lorenzo Fioroni’s production sets the action of the story ...

February 8, 2025

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Sat, Feb 8, 2025, 17:00

About the work According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up. About the production Tobias Kratzer has chosen this monumental fantasy opera to close his cycle of Strauss works at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Where ARABELLA explores how hard it can be to even start a relationship based on equal rights and INTERMEZZO depicts what can happen in a marriage that has gone stale, in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Kratzer focuses on the challenge of rekindling a bond that has weakened through years of poor nurturing – an approach that extends far beyond the domestic sphere due to the ethical issues surrounding surrogate motherhood.

February 9, 2025

The Magic Flute

Sun, Feb 9, 2025, 16:00

About the work It’s the most performed opera in the German-speaking region, an unusual – and masterly – blend of Viennese folk theatre and fairy tale, mythology and freemasonry mystique: Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE remains a puzzle to this day. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder switch horses from the Queen of the Night to Sarastro half way through? Is the message not one of distrust towards a supposedly infallible priesthood and its simplistic good-versus-evil ideology? Are some Mozart experts right when they talk of a disconnect between text and music? Whatever the answer, it’s the music that allows us to relate to the story’s contradictions. Far from denouncing the characters, it confers an existentiality on their conflicts. Tamino is rescued from a dragon by three mysterious women, who show him a picture of Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, who has been kidnapped by Sarastro, high priest of the Temple of the Sun. Besotted with the picture, Tamino is instructed by the Queen to team up with Papageno to rescue her. For a talisman he is given a magic flute, Papageno some magic bells. When they fail to steal Pamina back, the three of them are subjected to a series of perilous ordeals. Firstly, the men must prove they can keep silent. With Tamino not speaking to her, Pamina is about to stab herself but is saved by the three boy spirits, who lead her to Tamino. The pair then pass the remaining ordeals by fire and water. Meanwhile Papageno has acquired a lady friend, with whom he dreams of living happily ever after. Tamino and Pamina are inducted into the brotherhood of the Enlightened and embrace the ideals of nature, wisdom and reason. About the production The Günter Krämer production focuses on the antithesis between two worlds, represented in THE MAGIC FLUTE by sun versus moon and dark versus light but also by the oppositions of nature versus culture and male versus female. These double-sided coins are visualised on stage as the contrast between black ...

February 11, 2025

Die Frau ohne Schatten

Tue, Feb 11, 2025, 18:00

About the work According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up. About the production Tobias Kratzer has chosen this monumental fantasy opera to close his cycle of Strauss works at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Where ARABELLA explores how hard it can be to even start a relationship based on equal rights and INTERMEZZO depicts what can happen in a marriage that has gone stale, in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Kratzer focuses on the challenge of rekindling a bond that has weakened through years of poor nurturing – an approach that extends far beyond the domestic sphere due to the ethical issues surrounding surrogate motherhood.

February 14, 2025

Turandot

Fri, Feb 14, 2025, 19:30

About the work A nation is cowed by its princess. Turandot, beautiful and fascinating representative of a royal dynasty, presides over a gruesome ritual: only her marriage to a suitor will bring an end to the violence, but no would-be bridegroom has yet managed to solve the riddles. The same old spectacle plays out, ending in yet another execution, until Calaf, the son of a deposed ruler from a foreign land, unexpectedly answers the riddles correctly. He then turns the tables on Turandot, forcing her to answer his own question if she wants to steal out of her obligation. Puccini’s times are changing rapidly, the art world is going through drastic transformation and new, abstract forms are being coined to reflect modern-day experience. And the composer, in his early 60s, is again trying to break new ground. Puccini spent the last four years of his life working on TURANDOT, based on a fairy tale by Carlo Gozzi [1762]. The score was his richest and altogether most dissonant. Far from being the soundtrack to a cutesy picture of a doll-like China, the exotic music provided the backdrop to a world suffused in an atmosphere of unimaginable cruelty. Try as he might, Puccini never did settle on a resolution to his drama. The composer who was ever leery of happy endings never managed to escape from the dead-end that he’d created for himself through Liù’s sacrifice and the imminent pairing of Turandot and Calaf. The question of how the two might ever discover some common ground remained unanswered. Puccini was variously intrigued and repelled by the idea of presenting of an all-encompassing love as a means to redemption in the face of everything that speaks against it – and could not bring himself to paint such a utopia. He left only a fragment behind when he died and the Ricordi publishing house brought in the composer Franco Alfano to complete the opera, based on sketches left behind by Puccini. About the production Lorenzo Fioroni’s production sets the action of the story ...

February 15, 2025

La traviata

Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 19:30

About the work Violetta Valery, living in kept splendour at the expense of Baron Douphol, has apparently recovered from a serious illness. To celebrate, she throws a party where she meets and falls for Alfredo Germont. As their love for each other is frowned upon, they set up house outside of Paris. Alfredo’s father insists that she break with his son in order not to jeopardise the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister. Violetta accedes to his wish and cuts off relations. In a showdown at another party Violetta tries to convince Alfredo that she’s in love with the Baron, causing Alfredo to hurl his gambling winnings at her feet, calling them “fees for services rendered”. Soon afterwards, at the height of the Paris carnival, Violetta is on her deathbed. She receives Alfredo, who has heard from his father her real reason for leaving him. Violetta forgives him, gives him her blessing and dies. Verdi’s only opera to be set in middle-class circles of mid-nineteenth-century Paris was based on “La dame aux camélias”, an acclaimed novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. The novel referenced the death of Marie Duplessis, a 23-year-old courtesan, from TB on 3rd February 1847 as the occasion for a critical study of the Parisian demi-monde. Where Dumas’s main characters form part of a tight social network, Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave eliminate anything that isn’t directly linked to the clashes between Violetta, Alfredo and father, Giorgio Germont. This drama of interior emotions focuses on the three stations on Violetta’a via: love, renunciation and death. About the production Götz Friedrich gave the opera the tragic slant of a requiem by telling Violetta’s story in the form of flashbacks, which begin with the prelude presenting Violetta lying on a white deathbed on a stark stage that resembles a massive tomb. She rises from the bed (which promptly becomes a chaise longue), pulls on a ballroom gown and turns to receive Paris’s party people disgorging into the room. The ...

February 16, 2025

Der fliegende Holländer

Sun, Feb 16, 2025, 16:00

About the work The Dutchman is a cursed man, an outsider, a driven individual. Richard Wagner came upon the character of the famous drifter via Heinrich Heine, who lent the Romantic material his typically ironic touch. Wagner’s interest was tweaked not by Heine’s packaging of the story, which relegated the Dutchman-based action to the margins, but by the tale of the enigmatic mariner, which led to him writing his first opera about the man’s quest for a woman who could offer him redemption. The Dutchman, restlessly plying the borderlands between life and death, encounters Senta, who appears equally ill-at-ease and rootless and yearns for a masculine character, the Dutchman, a figment of her imagination. Written in 1841 and performed for the first time in Dresden in 1843, Wagner’s opera, following on the heels of RIENZI, a work in the grand opéra tradition, harks back to the German idea of Romantic opera as exemplified by Weber or Marschner. THE FLYING DUTSCHMAN also marks the beginning of a new and characteristically Wagnerian style, a new form of musical drama. This is the first of many works by Wagner to place the theme of redemption through love in death at the core of the piece. About the production Director and choreographer Christian Spuck, artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin since 2023, has given us a realm of dream images and fantastical visions, of obsession and projection – a world that has lost touch with reality. Most affected by this is Erik, the huntsman, who seems to be the only figure capable of true love. But he can no longer get through to a Senta who is wrapped up in her dreams. Erik is in the nightmarish situation of watching Senta increasingly cut herself off from him until she eventually commits suicide.

February 20, 2025

Der fliegende Holländer

Thu, Feb 20, 2025, 19:30

About the work The Dutchman is a cursed man, an outsider, a driven individual. Richard Wagner came upon the character of the famous drifter via Heinrich Heine, who lent the Romantic material his typically ironic touch. Wagner’s interest was tweaked not by Heine’s packaging of the story, which relegated the Dutchman-based action to the margins, but by the tale of the enigmatic mariner, which led to him writing his first opera about the man’s quest for a woman who could offer him redemption. The Dutchman, restlessly plying the borderlands between life and death, encounters Senta, who appears equally ill-at-ease and rootless and yearns for a masculine character, the Dutchman, a figment of her imagination. Written in 1841 and performed for the first time in Dresden in 1843, Wagner’s opera, following on the heels of RIENZI, a work in the grand opéra tradition, harks back to the German idea of Romantic opera as exemplified by Weber or Marschner. THE FLYING DUTSCHMAN also marks the beginning of a new and characteristically Wagnerian style, a new form of musical drama. This is the first of many works by Wagner to place the theme of redemption through love in death at the core of the piece. About the production Director and choreographer Christian Spuck, artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin since 2023, has given us a realm of dream images and fantastical visions, of obsession and projection – a world that has lost touch with reality. Most affected by this is Erik, the huntsman, who seems to be the only figure capable of true love. But he can no longer get through to a Senta who is wrapped up in her dreams. Erik is in the nightmarish situation of watching Senta increasingly cut herself off from him until she eventually commits suicide.

February 22, 2025

La traviata

Sat, Feb 22, 2025, 19:30

About the work Violetta Valery, living in kept splendour at the expense of Baron Douphol, has apparently recovered from a serious illness. To celebrate, she throws a party where she meets and falls for Alfredo Germont. As their love for each other is frowned upon, they set up house outside of Paris. Alfredo’s father insists that she break with his son in order not to jeopardise the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister. Violetta accedes to his wish and cuts off relations. In a showdown at another party Violetta tries to convince Alfredo that she’s in love with the Baron, causing Alfredo to hurl his gambling winnings at her feet, calling them “fees for services rendered”. Soon afterwards, at the height of the Paris carnival, Violetta is on her deathbed. She receives Alfredo, who has heard from his father her real reason for leaving him. Violetta forgives him, gives him her blessing and dies. Verdi’s only opera to be set in middle-class circles of mid-nineteenth-century Paris was based on “La dame aux camélias”, an acclaimed novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. The novel referenced the death of Marie Duplessis, a 23-year-old courtesan, from TB on 3rd February 1847 as the occasion for a critical study of the Parisian demi-monde. Where Dumas’s main characters form part of a tight social network, Verdi and librettist Francesco Maria Piave eliminate anything that isn’t directly linked to the clashes between Violetta, Alfredo and father, Giorgio Germont. This drama of interior emotions focuses on the three stations on Violetta’a via: love, renunciation and death. About the production Götz Friedrich gave the opera the tragic slant of a requiem by telling Violetta’s story in the form of flashbacks, which begin with the prelude presenting Violetta lying on a white deathbed on a stark stage that resembles a massive tomb. She rises from the bed (which promptly becomes a chaise longue), pulls on a ballroom gown and turns to receive Paris’s party people disgorging into the room. The ...

February 25, 2025

Der fliegende Holländer

Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 19:30

About the work The Dutchman is a cursed man, an outsider, a driven individual. Richard Wagner came upon the character of the famous drifter via Heinrich Heine, who lent the Romantic material his typically ironic touch. Wagner’s interest was tweaked not by Heine’s packaging of the story, which relegated the Dutchman-based action to the margins, but by the tale of the enigmatic mariner, which led to him writing his first opera about the man’s quest for a woman who could offer him redemption. The Dutchman, restlessly plying the borderlands between life and death, encounters Senta, who appears equally ill-at-ease and rootless and yearns for a masculine character, the Dutchman, a figment of her imagination. Written in 1841 and performed for the first time in Dresden in 1843, Wagner’s opera, following on the heels of RIENZI, a work in the grand opéra tradition, harks back to the German idea of Romantic opera as exemplified by Weber or Marschner. THE FLYING DUTSCHMAN also marks the beginning of a new and characteristically Wagnerian style, a new form of musical drama. This is the first of many works by Wagner to place the theme of redemption through love in death at the core of the piece. About the production Director and choreographer Christian Spuck, artistic director of the Staatsballett Berlin since 2023, has given us a realm of dream images and fantastical visions, of obsession and projection – a world that has lost touch with reality. Most affected by this is Erik, the huntsman, who seems to be the only figure capable of true love. But he can no longer get through to a Senta who is wrapped up in her dreams. Erik is in the nightmarish situation of watching Senta increasingly cut herself off from him until she eventually commits suicide.

February 28, 2025

Nixon in China

Fri, Feb 28, 2025, 18:00

About the work Two of the world’s most powerful men shake hands – as the world looks on. With their opera about the state visit by US President Nixon to China in 1972 composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman rendered a recent historical event in operatic form. They envisioned a »heroic opera« telling of modern myths and the power of images. This rapprochement between the two great powers gave rise to one of the most prodigious media spectacles of the 20th century. Nixon himself put the event on a par with the moon landing. The opera, whose composition was pushed for by Peter Sellars, the director of the eventual premiere, is a depiction of both the details of the visit and the coverage by the media. Alice Goodman’s libretto reflects the tradition of 19th-century opera, with larger-than-life characters interacting and the protagonists dealing with both affairs of state and their private lives. Staged in the style of an excessively satirical documentary, the minimal-music opera sticks close to protocols from the state visit, depicting the larger-than-life protagonists swerving between exhibitionism, helplessness and the desire to reach a mutual understanding. 36 years after the world premiere this will be the first new production of NIXON IN CHINA to be mounted by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. With his works featuring prominently on opera house programmes, John Adams is, alongside Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, one of the key exponents of minimal music, an art form that sprang up in the 1960s as a response to the European avant-garde. Yet the opera, arguably Adams’s best known, eludes this kind of narrow categorisation due to its hybrid character, even if it is emblematic of the minimal-music style. With its rich tonal orchestrations and trancelike repetitions, the work shows sound wizard John Adams including flurries of big-band swing and allusions to European classical music. About the production Hauen und Stechen, the musical-theatre collective centring ...

March 2, 2025

‘Masses’ by Ed Atkins

Sun, Mar 2, 2025, 11:00

Ed Atkins is particularly attracted to the costumes from the Deutsche Oper Berlin's collection: the masses of different fabrics are lined up in dense rows on sober clothes rails like a compressed store of stories and memories. Each individual item of clothing would tell its own story if you took it off the rail: about the opera in which it was used, about the people who wore it and about the dreams it triggers in anyone who looks at it. For him, this analogue part of his installation forms a counterpart to his video installations, which stage fragments of stories from today's flood of images from digital media, some whimsical, some disturbing. This tension between costumes, opera stories and contemporary films forms the narrative core of Ed Atkins‘ work as a visual and narrative artist – at the same time, he is a contributor to the libretto of Rebecca Saunders’ world premiere LASH on 20 June 2025 on the stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Ed Atkins is one of the most versatile British artists of his generation and has attracted international attention as a visual artist, writer, and filmmaker. Atkins lives and works in Copenhagen. Recent institutional solo exhibitions include ‘Refuse’ at Tank, Shanghai (2022), ‘Get Life / Love's Work’ at the New Museum, New York (2021), as well as exhibitions at the Kunsthaus Bregenz and K21 Düsseldorf (both 2019), at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, at the MMK Frankfurt and DHC/ART in Montréal (all 2017), at Castello di Rivoli and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, at The Kitchen New York, SMK Copenhagen (all 2016), Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2015), The Serpentine Gallery London (2014), Julia Stoschek Collection Düsseldorf (2013) and MoMA PS1 (2012). Atkins was included in the 56th and 58th Venice Biennales, the 13th Lyon Biennale, and Performa 13 and 19. An anthology of Ed’s texts, ‘A Primer for Cadavers’, was published by Fitzcarraldo in 2016, and an extensive artist’s monograph from Skira was released in 2017. An epic ...

Nixon in China

Sun, Mar 2, 2025, 17:00

About the work Two of the world’s most powerful men shake hands – as the world looks on. With their opera about the state visit by US President Nixon to China in 1972 composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman rendered a recent historical event in operatic form. They envisioned a »heroic opera« telling of modern myths and the power of images. This rapprochement between the two great powers gave rise to one of the most prodigious media spectacles of the 20th century. Nixon himself put the event on a par with the moon landing. The opera, whose composition was pushed for by Peter Sellars, the director of the eventual premiere, is a depiction of both the details of the visit and the coverage by the media. Alice Goodman’s libretto reflects the tradition of 19th-century opera, with larger-than-life characters interacting and the protagonists dealing with both affairs of state and their private lives. Staged in the style of an excessively satirical documentary, the minimal-music opera sticks close to protocols from the state visit, depicting the larger-than-life protagonists swerving between exhibitionism, helplessness and the desire to reach a mutual understanding. 36 years after the world premiere this will be the first new production of NIXON IN CHINA to be mounted by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. With his works featuring prominently on opera house programmes, John Adams is, alongside Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, one of the key exponents of minimal music, an art form that sprang up in the 1960s as a response to the European avant-garde. Yet the opera, arguably Adams’s best known, eludes this kind of narrow categorisation due to its hybrid character, even if it is emblematic of the minimal-music style. With its rich tonal orchestrations and trancelike repetitions, the work shows sound wizard John Adams including flurries of big-band swing and allusions to European classical music. About the production Hauen und Stechen, the musical-theatre collective centring ...

March 4, 2025

The Magic Flute

Tue, Mar 4, 2025, 19:30

About the work It’s the most performed opera in the German-speaking region, an unusual – and masterly – blend of Viennese folk theatre and fairy tale, mythology and freemasonry mystique: Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE remains a puzzle to this day. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder switch horses from the Queen of the Night to Sarastro half way through? Is the message not one of distrust towards a supposedly infallible priesthood and its simplistic good-versus-evil ideology? Are some Mozart experts right when they talk of a disconnect between text and music? Whatever the answer, it’s the music that allows us to relate to the story’s contradictions. Far from denouncing the characters, it confers an existentiality on their conflicts. Tamino is rescued from a dragon by three mysterious women, who show him a picture of Pamina, daughter of the Queen of the Night, who has been kidnapped by Sarastro, high priest of the Temple of the Sun. Besotted with the picture, Tamino is instructed by the Queen to team up with Papageno to rescue her. For a talisman he is given a magic flute, Papageno some magic bells. When they fail to steal Pamina back, the three of them are subjected to a series of perilous ordeals. Firstly, the men must prove they can keep silent. With Tamino not speaking to her, Pamina is about to stab herself but is saved by the three boy spirits, who lead her to Tamino. The pair then pass the remaining ordeals by fire and water. Meanwhile Papageno has acquired a lady friend, with whom he dreams of living happily ever after. Tamino and Pamina are inducted into the brotherhood of the Enlightened and embrace the ideals of nature, wisdom and reason. About the production The Günter Krämer production focuses on the antithesis between two worlds, represented in THE MAGIC FLUTE by sun versus moon and dark versus light but also by the oppositions of nature versus culture and male versus female. These double-sided coins are visualised on stage as the contrast between black ...

March 5, 2025

Nixon in China

Wed, Mar 5, 2025, 19:30

About the work Two of the world’s most powerful men shake hands – as the world looks on. With their opera about the state visit by US President Nixon to China in 1972 composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman rendered a recent historical event in operatic form. They envisioned a »heroic opera« telling of modern myths and the power of images. This rapprochement between the two great powers gave rise to one of the most prodigious media spectacles of the 20th century. Nixon himself put the event on a par with the moon landing. The opera, whose composition was pushed for by Peter Sellars, the director of the eventual premiere, is a depiction of both the details of the visit and the coverage by the media. Alice Goodman’s libretto reflects the tradition of 19th-century opera, with larger-than-life characters interacting and the protagonists dealing with both affairs of state and their private lives. Staged in the style of an excessively satirical documentary, the minimal-music opera sticks close to protocols from the state visit, depicting the larger-than-life protagonists swerving between exhibitionism, helplessness and the desire to reach a mutual understanding. 36 years after the world premiere this will be the first new production of NIXON IN CHINA to be mounted by the Deutsche Oper Berlin. With his works featuring prominently on opera house programmes, John Adams is, alongside Steve Reich, Philip Glass and Terry Riley, one of the key exponents of minimal music, an art form that sprang up in the 1960s as a response to the European avant-garde. Yet the opera, arguably Adams’s best known, eludes this kind of narrow categorisation due to its hybrid character, even if it is emblematic of the minimal-music style. With its rich tonal orchestrations and trancelike repetitions, the work shows sound wizard John Adams including flurries of big-band swing and allusions to European classical music. About the production Hauen und Stechen, the musical-theatre collective centring ...

March 7, 2025

Arabella

Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 19:00

About the work Vienna, circa 1860. The financially strapped Count Waldner is lodging with his family in a Viennese hotel. His only path to solvency is for him to secure an advantageous marriage for one of his two daughters – and the family can only afford to present Arabella, the eldest, in the upper circles of society. To conceal the family’s indigence, the parents have raised Zdenka as a boy, dressing her accordingly. Arabella is not short of suitors but has resolved to wait for ‘Mr Right’. When Mandryka, an aristocrat from a distant region, arrives, he and Arabella are instantly smitten. Arabella only asks to be able to bid farewell to her friends and suitors at the Fasching ball that evening. At the ball, Arabella says goodbye to her admirers. There is also the young officer Matteo, with whom Zdenka is secretly in love and with whom she has formed a friendship under the guise of her disguise as a boy. Matteo, however, desires Arabella and is distraught when he realises the hopelessness of his love. Zdenka devises a plan: she fakes a letter from Arabella in which she promises Matteo a night of love together. But instead she wants to wait for him herself in the darkness of the hotel room. Mandryka learns of Arabella's alleged infidelity and goes to the hotel with the ball guests to surprise Arabella in flagrante delicto. Arabella, innocent of this, is initially shocked and saddened by Mandryka’s suspicions but forgives him when the mix-up is revealed for what it is. The two agree to marry, as do Zdenka and Matteo. About the production Richard Strauss’s orchestral richness and opulence coupled with the period Viennese setting of the work led to ARABELLA being falsely pigeonholed as a light-hearted comedy of errors from its 1933 premiere onwards. In the estimation of Tobias Kratzer, however, who triumphed at the Deutsche Oper with his production of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s THE DWARF, this final collaboration between Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal marks a collision ...

March 8, 2025

Salome

Sat, Mar 8, 2025, 18:00

Long after the Paris world premiere in 1896 Oscar Wilde’s tragedy “Salomé” remained a thorn in the flesh of the establishment across Europe. In Wilhelminian Germany and the Danube Monarchy, too, official art adjudicators considered the subject “repulsive” and the text “an insult to morality”. In the minds of the guardians of public morals the New Testament story of Herod’s daughter was as ill-suited to the stage as it was to pictorial representation, which was experiencing a boom at the time. Salomé’s stepfather, Herod, the Roman’s client king of Judea, Galilee and Samaria who is said to have ordered the massacre of the innocents around Bethlehem, persuades her to dance for him. Encouraged by her mother, she demands to be given the head of John the Baptist as a reward. Official disapproval meant that the performance of Wilde’s play that Richard Strauss saw in 1902 in Max Reinhardt’s “Kleines Theater” in Berlin was a private function. The composer, who was already in possession of the beginnings of an opera libretto in verse form, resolved to use Hedwig Lachmann’s prose text as the basis for his composition. His SALOME was one of the first literaturopern of the 20th century and reflected a number of operatic preferences of the time such as the predilection for one-act works and for exotic, oriental subjects. A literaturoper is an opera whose lyrics are lifted directly, albeit sometimes in shortened and rearranged form, from a pre-existing play. Claus Goth, an internationally feted director since his MARRIAGE OF FIGARO in Salzburg in 2006, is taking on his first production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. His SALOME focuses on the interior motivations of the characters and explores the power dynamic within the house of Herod. Will Salomé manage to break free from her hellish domestic situation?

March 13, 2025

Intermezzo

Thu, Mar 13, 2025, 19:30

About the work Audiences exiting the theatre after the world premiere of Richard Strauss’s eighth opera INTERMEZZO felt wrong-footed and out-of-sorts. Instead of drawing on classical material or mythology, the composer had served up a straight story with him and his wife as characters, showing contempt for the boundary between private life and literary work. What they hadn’t realised was that Strauss had once again demonstrated that he was not only hip to musical-theatre trends but could also make them his own: for INTERMEZZO is Strauss’s response to 1920s audiences’ desire for “modern” opera subjects and can be seen as part of a line of avant-garde works by the likes of Arnold Schönberg (VON HEUTE AUF MORGEN) and Paul Hindemith (NEUES VOM TAGE). Unlike them, however, Strauss remains true to his classical sound and creates another of his famous soprano roles, shimmering with cantilenas, in the form of the main character, Christine, the fictional composer’s wife. And in the same way that Christine represents Strauss’s real-life wife Pauline, so the successful kapellmeister Robert Storch stands in as Richard Strauss himself. Even the misunderstanding that almost destroys the fictional marriage is based on fact. The old comic device, a seductive letter from a woman of dubious virtue that falls into the wrong hands, leads Christine to believe that her husband is two-timing her. The misapprehension is cleared up and everything ends happily, yet the INTERMEZZO incident is more a way of painting the complex, sensitive picture of a woman who is unfulfilled but also aware that she is defined by her role as the caring spouse of a successful musician. About the production INTERMEZZO is the middle element in a Richard Strauss trilogy running at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, in which director Tobias Kratzer shines a spotlight on phases in the trajectory of a relationship. Following on from ARABELLA, which explored the difficulties of courtship, INTERMEZZO studies the “wearisome lowlands”. ...