Stage Director

He commands a world empire and yet he is deeply unsettled. Philip II of Spain not only fears losing command but also feels betrayed and deserted by his wife Elizabeth von Valois: she and his son Carlo are in love. Over all this hangs the threatening shadow of the Inquisition. In vain, King Philip seeks trust in a hostile world.

Don Carlo

Bebelplatz

While "Don Giovanni" is being performed in the opera house, the real show takes place in the wine cellar next door – here, the poet Hoffmann entertains his customers with his fantastic tales in which people turn out to be machines, singing can be fatal, and mysterious figures seek to rob him of his reflection. The hidden core of every story: his relationship with the singer Stella, who is also on stage as Donna Anna in the opera. The longer the evening goes on, the crazier the stories become, until Hoffmann finally threatens to lose touch with reality...

EPSG:4326

Hoffmann's Tales Les contes d'Hoffmann

Theater Lübeck

A suddenly awakened desire throws Sergeant Don José off his usual path. A woman who unexpectedly throws a flower at his feet gives him access to a world he had previously closed off to. The woman's name is Carmen, and she is a social outsider. What she wants, she takes; when she loves, she does so with every fiber of her being. A coincidence brings Carmen and José together, or perhaps a misunderstanding. For José, erotically inexperienced, believes that the flower thrown at him has attracted Carmen's attention. To be with her, he accepts military demotion and imprisonment; in fact, he ultimately risks his entire civil existence for a relationship with Carmen. But after a short time, she has had enough of him and wants to break up with him. Carmen uncompromisingly asserts her right to freedom and self-determination.

Carmen

A sudden desire throws Sergeant Don José off his usual path. A woman who suddenly throws a flower at his feet gives him access to a world that he had previously closed himself off from. The woman is called Carmen and she is a social outsider. What she wants, she takes; when she loves, she loves with every fiber of her being. Carmen and José meet each other by chance, or perhaps by misunderstanding.

Aida

La bohème is the pinnacle of lyric-psychological opera of the late 19th century. It inherits the traditions of Verdi's La traviata and is dedicated, according to musicologist Mikhail Muginshtein, to "the sad secret of life, revealed in the theme of the irreversibility of time."

The German director Philipp Himmelmann is known to the Russian public for the Perm production of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro (2012). In his interpretation of Puccini's opera, the action takes place in the sixties in Paris. A legendary time that gave the world a new cinema, a new fashion, a new understanding of the role of the individual in history.

Stage Director

Philipp Himmelmann

Events

Past events

5 - 26 Jun, 2026

Don Carlo · Staatsoper Berlin

Jan 31 - Jun 18, 2026

Hoffmann's Tales Les contes d'Hoffmann · Theater Lübeck

About

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