Costume Designer

Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary is considered a masterpiece of French realism and a pioneering work of literary modernity. Flaubert devoted five years to writing this work, which was published in 1856 and caused a scandal due to its unflinching portrayal of adultery and forbidden desires. With his precise, distantly observing style, Flaubert created a new form of storytelling that rendered inner states and social constraints with striking clarity.

Bovary

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Giuseppe Verdi’s «Messa da Requiem» is one of the most popular pieces in the concert repertoire. In a sensational co-production by the Oper Zürich and Ballett Zürich, Christian Spuck brought the oratorio for four solo voices, choir, and orchestra to the stage in 2016, as a combination of dance, abstract scene, space, and light. In his internationally acclaimed production, Spuck focuses on the human creature in the face of death and embarks on a sensitive search for traces of the whence and whither of the human being, between the terrifying proximity of death, loneliness, community solidarity, and mourning.

Requiem Mass

Zurich Opera House

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.

Der fliegende Holländer

How terrible must life be if you can’t laugh? Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges is about a king who wishes to help his sick son. But only one thing can cure the malady of the heir to the throne: laughter. While the doctors are trying their luck, Truffaldino and Fata Morgana get into a fight, during which the latter is knocked over.

The Love for Three Oranges

Semperoper Dresden

Irina can't bear it any longer; it bursts out of her: "My God! Where has it all gone? I've forgotten everything." Then, as if suddenly: "We'll never move to Moscow." Neither the past with its memories nor the future with its hopes offer any support. Time erodes and shrinks to the present—and here emptiness, dissatisfaction, pain, loneliness reign. A condition that haunts almost all the characters in Peter Eötvös' opera Three Sisters (1998)—they are those from Anton Chekhov's drama of the same name. The reactions are varied: repression or relativization, resignation or escape, and, of course, new dreams, hopes, or even plans. Yet a seemingly unbridgeable gap remains between today and the longed-for tomorrow. Why don't these people make it to Moscow, a symbol of a different, better, more meaningful life? What obstacles—internal, external—hold them back? It's a question we continually find ourselves confronting anew, one that brings us so close to Chekhov's and, by extension, Eötvös's characters. It becomes all the more acute in the face of a suddenly spreading fire—a catastrophe that challenges us to take concrete action, that confronts us with destruction and suffering, with death, and the awareness that our own life could end sooner than we imagined.

EPSG:4326

Three Sisters

Felsenreitschule

This new production of one of the most fascinating contemporary works of music theater celebrates its premiere at this year's edition of the Salzburg Festival. Based on Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, Claus H. Henneberg and Peter Eötvös contributed the libretto for the opera in three sequences. The Klangforum Wien Orchestra performs under the direction of Maxime Pascal and Alphonse Cemin.

Salzburger Festspiele – Tri Sestri

The Flying Dutchman

Age recommendation: 12 and up Gustave Flaubert’s novel Madame Bovary is a masterpiece of world literature that paved the way for modernism. When it was published in 1856, a scandal ensued. Flaubert was accused of «glorifying adultery and charged with violating public and religious morality and decency». The novel tells the story of a young country woman who wants much more than a suffocating provincial life at the side of her petit-bourgeois, unambitious husband. Emma Bovary rebels against her marriage, takes on lovers, loses herself in dreams of passion, luxury and debauchery – and it ends in disaster. She falls hopelessly into debt, ruins her family and finally takes a fatal dose of poison. ‹Bovarism›, a condition in which a person denies reality, is named after the protagonist of Flaubert’s famous novel: Emma Bovary escapes from her dull life in the provinces through excessive fantasies, which she cultivates by reading romantic novels and Parisian fashion magazines. Her extramarital affairs mirror this kitsch, fantasy world, as she lives beyond her means and loses sight of reality. Measured against its literary fame, Madame Bovary is rarely performed on stage, particularly as a ballet. Flaubert’s narrative style seems too cool and realistic for a stage adaptation. But precisely his detached, accurate language, combined with his total engagement with his subject matter, makes it so inspiring. The female figure as an outsider is at the centre of this new production, which does not tell Madame Bovary as a conventional story ballet but instead breaks up narrative structures and approaches the material through abstract choreography and intimate psychological observation. At the same time, it never loses sight of the tale. Christian Spuck’s dance piece Bovary is about the search for female self-determination, rapture and loneliness, substitutions for love, self-injury, hedonism and the fatal outcome when fantasy worlds and reality merge into one. The concept for this new production by the Staatsballett Berlin is to adapt the literary material using darkly poetic imagery and refined humour – to tell the story, not for the sake of telling it, but to enter the characters’ inner worlds and transform them into dance.

How terrible must life be if you can’t laugh? Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges is about a king who wishes to help his sick son. But only one thing can cure the malady of the heir to the throne: laughter. While the doctors are trying their luck, Truffaldino and Fata Morgana get into a fight, during which the latter is knocked over. When her mishap causes the Prince to laugh, she quickly places a curse on him: he is destined to fall in love with three oranges. The Prince and Truffaldino immediately set off on a hair-raising journey that finally takes them to a desert – a trip that can be seen as a balancing act between fantasy and reality. Here parody is tinged with tragedy and a touch of the grotesque.

Disenchanted by his lifelong quest for knowledge, the ageing philosopher Faust makes a pact with the devil and trades his soul for eternal youth—to disastrous consequences.

Faust

Canadian Opera Company

An officer, an unattainable love and a deadly secret: Hermann loves Lisa, who is under the care of the old countess, but as a penniless outsider, his path to her remains blocked.

The Queen of Spades

Vienna State Opera

How much would you bet on human nature? Set in a casino in 1920s France, Don Alfonso wagers his two young friends that their fiancées will cheat on them by the end of the day. All bets are off in a fresh production of this comedic masterpiece, where speculation — financial and romantic — always entails risk.

Costume Designer

Emma Ryott

Events

Upcoming events

12 - 27 Mar, 2027

The Queen of Spades · Wiener Staatsoper

Jul 17 - Aug 25, 2027

Così fan tutte · Santa Fe Opera

Past events

Sep 25 - Oct 10, 2026

Bovary · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Feb 20 - Apr 6, 2026

Requiem Mass · Opernhaus Zürich

About

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