Composed by one of the major figures of 20th-century musical theatre – the creator of 16 musicals and hundreds of songs, who launched his career writing the lyrics for Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story – it is an iconic work of its genre. SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a riveting synthesis of dark humour, horror and melodrama, imbued with brilliant musical irony.

SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

State Opera

Although W. A. Mozart wrote Idomeneo to commission for the Munich court and Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria, a keen patron of the arts, who chose the subject himself, the opera is probably his most personal work (with the patriarchal system of blind obedience and a rebellion of the young seeming to evoke the composer’s tense relationship with his father Leopold), featuring excellently crafted characters. All the main protagonists are confronted with their own weaknesses or inability to defy fate. In the wake of the Trojan War, Idomeneo, King of Crete, made a fateful vow to Neptune, God of the Sea, to be executed should he arrive home safely. Just like the Old Testament’s Jephthah and Abraham, he faces the dilemma of whether to sacrifice his own child or to offend a god. Idomeneo ultimately yields, ready to kill his son, Idamante. Prince Idamante is in love with Ilia, daughter of Priam, the defeated King of Troy, who has lost her family and homeland in the war. Ilia is fond of Idamante, but hesitates to acknowledge her love of an enemy, whose father Idomeneo helped Achilles and Odysseus take Troy. Elettra, daughter of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, is wildly jealous of Ilia, and intends to win Idamante at any cost. Mozart rendered the heroes’ extreme emotions by means of ravishingly powerful music. He and the librettist Giovanni Battista Varesco ended the Ancient Greek story happily: Idomeneo’s old order gives way to the rule of love and reason, with Idamante and Ilia ascending the throne.

Idomeneo

Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel is one of the most frequently performed operas in Germany. Inspired by the Grimm brothers’ popular fairy tale, the libretto was written by the composer’s sister Adelheid Wette, who modified the rather macabre story, adding the characters of the Sandman and the Dew Fairy, as well as the instrumental dream pantomime scene in the forest, and concluding it with the resurrection of the witch’s victims and the happy reunion between the children and their parents. With the music written in the grand Wagnerian romantic style, Humperdinck’s opera also contains folk rhythms, songs for children and old melodies. The world premiere, in Weimar on 23 December 1893, was conducted by Richard Strauss, totally enraptured by the piece. Enraptured too was the audience, and Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel has ever since remained extremely popular in Germany, where every December it has been performed at more than 35 opera houses. In 1905, the piece was first shown at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where it has often been staged during Christmas.

Hänsel und Gretel

With its subject, taken over from the German collection of ghost stories Gespensterbuch (Book of Spectres), and its dramatic music, Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz  (The Marksman) is a quintessentially Romantic piece, deemed one of the first, and most renowned, Romantic operas.

Richard Hein

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 24, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street · Národní divadlo

12 - 28 Nov, 2026

Idomeneo · Národní divadlo

4 - 23 Dec, 2026

Hänsel und Gretel · Národní divadlo

Apr 22 - May 23, 2027

Der Freischütz (The Marksman) · Národní divadlo

Past events

Sep 24, 2026 - Jun 27, 2027

SWEENEY TODD: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street · Národní divadlo

Future and recently performed repertoire

Conductor in Idomeneo by Mozart

Národní divadlo

Conductor in Sweeney Todd by Sondheim

Národní divadlo

Conductor in Der Freischütz by Weber

Národní divadlo

Conductor in Hänsel und Gretel by Humperdinck

Národní divadlo

About

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