Lighting Designer

Jacques Offenbach composed more than 100 operas and operettas, most of them with unique wit and biting satire, original and inspired. At the end of his illustrious career in Paris, which stretched over five decades, he turned to his most ambitious operatic work Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann), an opéra fantastique based on a play that premiered in 1881.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann

Bebelplatz

Modest Mussorgsky’s national folk drama centres on a grim episode of late 17th-century Russian history. Ivan Khovansky, leader of the musketeer corps (streltsy), and his son Andrei, are planning a conspiracy, but the ambitious Prince Vasily Golitsyn, the boyar Shaklovity and cleric Dosifey also get involved in the struggle for power.

Khovanshchina

Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium on May 17 to conduct Strauss’s one-act tragedy, which will be transmitted live from the Metropolitan Opera stage to cinemas worldwide. Leading the company’s first new production of the work in 20 years, Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting. South African soprano Elza van den Heever leads a celebrated cast as the abused and unhinged antiheroine, with Swedish baritone Peter Mattei as the imprisoned prophet Jochanaan; German tenor Gerhard Siegel as Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod; American mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias; and Polish tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth.

EPSG:4326

Salome

Shalin Liu Performance Center

Azucena had to witness her mother being burned as a witch. In revenge, she kidnapped the younger of the two sons of the old Count di Luna, who ordered her mother’s burning, but in her delirium she threw her own son onto the flames instead of the Count’s son. Years later, the new Count di Luna, the brother of the kidnapped child, and the »Troubadour« Manrico, the supposed son of Azucena, not only fight on opposing sides in a civil war, but also encounter each other because they both love the lady-in-waiting Leonora. Nobody suspects that Manrico is actually Luna’s kidnapped brother – until Leonora sacrifices herself for her beloved and the hate-filled Luna kills his rival.

The Troubadour

Mark Twains Kinderbuchklassiker über Freundschaft, wilde Abenteuer, das Erwachsenwerden und die erste zarte Liebe mit der Musik des Deutsch-Amerikaners Kurt Weill.

Tom Sawyer

Schiller Theater

Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts his first Met performances of Strauss’s white-hot one-act tragedy, which receives its first new production at the company in 20 years. Claus Guth, one of Europe’s leading opera directors, gives the biblical story—already filtered through the beautiful and strange imagination of Oscar Wilde’s play—a psychologically perceptive Victorian-era setting rich in symbolism and subtle shades of darkness and light. Headlining the new staging is soprano Elza van den Heever as the abused and unhinged antiheroine, who demands the head of Jochanaan, sung by celebrated baritone Peter Mattei. Tenor Gerhard Siegel is Salome’s lecherous stepfather, King Herod, with mezzo-soprano Michelle DeYoung as his wife, Herodias, and tenor Piotr Buszewski as Narraboth. Derrick Inouye conducts two performances in May.

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Don Giovanni knows what he wants, how to get it and how to throw an incredibly decadent party. Servant Leporello groans under his master's seductive skills, as he has to pay the price for everything afterwards. When Don Giovanni murders the Commendatore in a duel for the honor of his daughter Donna Anna, Leporello has had enough too. Don Giovanni loves to seduce, trick and play for his life, until suddenly, young and wild, he has to face death...

Don Giovanni/Requiem

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG was Richard Wagner’s only light-hearted opera and remains one of his most popular works. This notwithstanding, MEISTERSINGER is also the musical manifesto of a German national art movement and, as such, has accumulated so much baggage over the years that people are apt to lose sight of the opera’s essence – a jolly and coherent comedy with its helter-skelter storyline centring on illusion and reality, love, ageing and the plying of one’s art – and this despite the core theme of a life dominated by music determining not only the cast of characters but also the action of the piece. The members of the master-singers guild have convened to make music in accordance with their strict rulebook. One of the singers, the wealthy Veit Pogner, has granted his daughter Eva the freedom to choose which suitor she will marry – with the proviso that it be a master singer, in other words the winner of a public singing competition. A pity, then, that Eva is in love with Walther von Stolzing, who is talented but devoid of formal training. Nonetheless he takes part in the competition, aided and abetted by master singer Hans Sachs, who has to forego his love for Eva in the process.

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Violetta is the most sought-after courtesan of the Parisian demimonde. However, her encounter with Alfredo makes her pleasure-seeking life seem questionable: they fall in love and try to build a life for themselves, far from the fast pleasures of the city. Her past, however, catches up with Violetta. Alfredo’s father persuades her that a separation is the only way to restore his family honour. Alfredo, unaware of the true reasons for her decision, insults Violetta in public. When they are finally reunited, Violetta has run out of time.

La Traviata

Staatsoper Hamburg

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.

In a villa by the sea in a summer resort, where Figaro is on holiday, emotions run high, old grudges are settled, and intrigues spun. At the end of this "great day", however, there is forgiveness. Once again, love triumphs and everyone is happy – the Count and Countess, Figaro and Susanna, Bartolo and Marcellina, and even Cherubino, who had hitherto stirred everything up.

The Marriage of Figaro

Engelbert Humperdinck's great fairytale opera for the whole family is back on the stage of the Komische Oper Berlin! In the new production by Dagmar Manzel, the story of the siblings in the forest comes to life again: full of childlike imagination, poetic wit and lots of magic.

Hansel and Gretel

Endgame, game over. With four characters. Hamm and his servants Clov. Hamm’s parents Nagg and Nell. A play with rules, rituals, memories, and words. Words that are sung, which has only been rarely done with Samuel Beckett’s texts. György Kurtág’s opera Fin de partie is the only full-length setting of one of his plays.

End of game

When Richard Wagner developed his initial ideas for Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in the mid-1840s, he had no intention of writing a monumental "festive opera". The work was intended to be a facile comedy, a jovial and humorous satyr play to place alongside his Tannhäuser, since – like Tannhäuser – reflections on art and artists are its focus. More than two decades later, he had a musical score that was one of the most extensive and multi-layered of his entire repertoire, and that aroused controversy.

In this great musical on the stage of the Schillertheater, director Barrie Kosky proves himself to be a master of the macabre. A musical thriller from Stephen Sondheim that is as bitter as it is lustfully gruesome, about the bloody revenge of the legendary London hairdresser Sweeney Todd. At the side of the title character as the meat pie queen Mrs. Lovett: Dagmar Manzel!

Sweeney Todd

Do people need redemption? Between heavenly choirs of angels with a radiant brass aureole and a hellish cauldron of witches with the gloomy pealing of bells, the world’s spheres take on a concrete, haunting shape in the sound space of the opera „Mefistofele“. For centuries, many different artworks have been inspired by the tale of Faust, which explores the complex relationship between God, the Devil, man and woman. Who seduces whom to do what, and how can we achieve redemption?

Mefistofele

Semperoper Dresden

The tragic drama of an oppressed person from society’s lower classes: Wozzeck, a hardworking but penniless soldier, is increasingly losing control of his life and his mind. He is seized by increasingly violent psychotic episodes, until in a delusion, he stabs and kills his girlfriend Marie.

Wozzeck

Violetta is the most sought-after courtesan of the Parisian demimonde. However, her encounter with Alfredo makes her pleasure-seeking life seem questionable: they fall in love and try to build a life for themselves, far from the fast pleasures of the city...

Hamburg State Opera

The Viennese aristocracy are no strangers to family feuds: boorish Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau interrupts the morning tête-à-tête between his cousin, the Marschallin, and her young lover Octavian, to ask for her help with his wedding plans, which are steered more by financial gain than love. Ochs does not suspect that Octavian himself, who is chosen to deliver the engagement rose, will eventually fall in love with the bride.

Der Rosenkavalier

Hostility, hatred and religious wars, power, helplessness and desire: in the Hebrew struggle for freedom, Samson, as God’s chosen one, rebukes the hostile Philistines. Samson seems invincible until his love for the Philistine Dalila exposes him. She finds out the secret of his extraordinary strength. The loss of his identity is at stake, and a race against time begins.

Lighting Designer

Olaf Freese

Events

Upcoming events

Nov 16, 2025 - Mar 22, 2026

Les Contes d’Hoffmann · Staatsoper Berlin

Dec 14, 2025 - Jan 4, 2026

Wozzeck · Staatsoper Berlin

Jan 7 - Feb 21, 2026

La Traviata · Staatsoper Hamburg

Mar 28 - Apr 5, 2026

Der Rosenkavalier · Staatsoper Berlin

4 - 12 Jul, 2026

Samson et Dalila · Staatsoper Berlin

Past events

Nov 16, 2025 - Mar 22, 2026

Les Contes d’Hoffmann · Staatsoper Berlin

2 - 23 Nov, 2025

Khovanshchina · Staatsoper Berlin

About

Olaf Freese hasn't added a bio