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On the steps of the entrance foyer of the Hamburg State Opera, school classes can watch the musicians closely and intervene directly in the musical action with the help of emojis. The focus is on works from the chamber music repertoire.

What happens when, in times of war and destruction, even your own family becomes a battlefield and mistrust, desire and betrayal break out? The cruel, ingenious and at the same time megalomaniac King of Pontus, Mitridate, fights a hopeless war against the Romans, while his two sons are under pressure from their father and his fiancée Aspasia decides against her duty and in favor of her feelings and turns away from him. With Mitridate, the 14-year-old Mozart composed his first full-length opera seria according to all the rules of the time and at the same time a work in which his humanistic flair already shines through. In the arias, he gives the ensemble of singers ample opportunity to explore the depths of the human soul and display their vocal virtuosity. Preserving the essence of this historical operatic genre, but at the same time reinterpreting its form, the aim is to create something in which the orchestra is integrated both visually and in terms of content. In this way, the fate of the characters can be experienced directly through visible music-making.

Inspired by his romantic love for Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard Wagner created one of the most beautiful operas in music history. This season, the Hamburg State Opera revives its legendary production by Ruth Berghaus of 1988.

Under the face of the wandering moon, spirit and body quarrel in all their greatness and wretchedness until the blood of two bodies flows. Strauss remains close to Wilde's re-creation of the biblical material, which leads Salome from her mother's tool to autonomy. It is she who, in her unfulfilled desire for the liberatingly different, the body of the prophet Jochanaan, seeks revenge and demands his head - a price the male-dominated society around Herod is willing to pay for their dance. Now that Salome holds his severed head in her hands, she can kiss Jochanaan, possess him if not alive, then dead. As if under a burning glass, Strauss pours Oscar Wilde's demonic dramaturgy into sound like an eruption of the psyche, accompanying his protagonist from her failed escape from the decadence of her existence to her death.

Hop! A little melody finds its way into a very eager orchestra. And of course everyone wants to play the melody! A terrible argument breaks out about this, until finally a little violin with the melody takes off. Luckily, the big, old bass violin immediately sets off to find the violin and its melody...

Why are we here? Are we loved? Have children someday? Graduate from school? And will there still be someone to remember us in 100 years' time? A group of young people looking for their way through perhaps the hardest time of their lives. Driven by the feeling of loneliness and the longing for closeness, by ignorance and boundless curiosity, by pressure to perform and sheer despair, they struggle through the school year: Moritz, Melchior, Wendla and their classmates. They experience violence, abuse, death and a small spark of hope for all the survivors (perhaps also the dead). Wedekind's drama is more than a coming-of-age drama, it is a reckoning with the society of its time, an unsparing story that has lost none of its revolutionary power to this day and will be unleashed in a new and contemporary way through music in this world premiere.

Seeking to test their girlfriends’ fidelity, two men wager that they will remain steadfast. They subject the women to passionate onslaught, and in the end, the fortress of their faithfulness falls. The men, however, involved as they are in the experiment, failed to reckon that they too might betray their partners and feelings. All this cheating, confusing, lying – to others and oneself – is grotesquely comical and simultaneously cruel. One side is inclined not to think about the new situation (Guglielmo and Dorabella), while the others try to comprehend it to the point of exhaustion (Fiordiligi and Ferrando). The final ceremony seeks to cement the social status quo, bringing this new freedom to its knees. The marriage, however, is only for show, and beneath the surface of tradition, the first cracks appear.

During times of historical upheaval, the victors are filled with euphoric jubilation while fear spreads on the side of the losers. When cheerfulness grips the figures in Mozart’s piece, it is the swan song, full of schadenfreude, of dying structures, ancient privileges and traditional manners – including those between man and woman. Mozart (and Beaumarchais) hold the balance on the threshold between eras – as artists en route to self-marketing, as portraitists of their times, by precisely rendering a society whose balance is shifting, making Almaviva a ridiculous figure. His class is losing political power, and he compensates for this loss by becoming a slave to his sexual desire. The wind is blowing from the past, giving wing to Walter Benjamin’s angel of history. It is a storm for the winners, and for the losers a mere melancholy breeze. The angel sees nothing but ruins.