Director

Named after the Palacio de la Zarzuela near Madrid, the early form of Spanish musical theatre emerged as early as the 17th century, parallel to Italian opera. Related to vaudeville, farce and operetta, hundreds of these entertaining and effective works were written within a few decades. The genre was increasingly forgotten and only experienced a revival in the mid-19th century. However, it is still neglected on theatre programmes today. Star director Christof Loy, who has been a strong advocate of the zarzuela for many years, is staging an evening at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

Gran Gala de Zarzuela

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Director Christof Loy has already helped four little-known operas from the early 20th century make a successful comeback at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: Erich Wolfgang Korngold's DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE and Riccardo Zandonai's FRANCESCA DA RIMINI were followed by other long-forgotten operatic treasures: Franz Schreker's DER SCHATZGRÄBER in 2022 and finally Ottorino Respighi's LA FIAMMA in 2024.

The Treasure Hunter (Der Schatzgräber)

Umberto Giordano’s FEDORA swings between whodunnit and the world of political intrigue, at once a tragic love story and a riveting psychogram. The opera was based on the play of the same name by Victorien Sardou, a French playwright who had already provided the source material for Puccini’s TOSCA. The triumphant world premiere of FEDORA in 1898 at the Tetro Lirico in Milan went down in history for featuring the break-out performance of the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso, who established its best-known aria, “Amor ti vieta”, in the collective memory of the world’s operagoers. That first production went on to huge international acclaim, touring Vienna, Paris, Hamburg and the New York MET. Giordano’s best received work after ANDREA CHÉNIER, FEDORA continues to thrill audiences with its musical richness and iconic melodies as it goes about depicting a fin-de-siécle elite whose private issues become entangled with political wheeling and dealing.

Fedora

He was touted as the new star in Italy’s operatic firmament around 1910. Publisher Tito Ricordi had big plans for the young Riccardo Zandonai and was sparing no cost to achieve the same triumphs with him as Giulio Ricordi had done a generation earlier with the young Puccini. For a huge fee, Ricordi secured the rights to a scandalous contemporary play - Gabriele D’Annunzio’s 5-act drama “Francesca da Rimini” – which had created a stir with its bloody civil-war scenes, cruel passions and adulterous couple. D’Annunzio’s fin-de-siècle-esque “poem of blood and lust” was all the rage in artist circles. The 31-year-old Riccardo Zandonai spied his chance to pen a florid opera of grandiose scale in a musical language fusing a raft of styles and epochs. And sure enough, Zandonai ploughs his individual European furrow of musical theatre, encompassing Italian bel canto, hints of Renaissance madrigals, gritty verismo, pre-Fascist marches, Wagner’s TRISTAN as a point of reference and a French Impressionism à la Debussy.

Francesca da Rimini

Madrid in turmoil. The barber Lamparilla has no interest in politics. But he is in love and becomes embroiled in an intrigue that reaches all the way to the Spanish royal family. A cheerful game of cat and mouse with the authorities begins, fueled by irresistible Spanish dance rhythms and music reminiscent of Rossini and Verdi. In this classic 19th-century zarzuela, which is yet to be discovered in German-speaking countries, social and political tensions are vented through folklore and humor. Christof Loy devotes himself to the best-known work of this genre and brings it to the stage with a Spanish cast and in the original language.

El barberillo de Lavapiés

Theater Basel

Based on a play by Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Salome is one of the most intense and powerful operas ever created. Sensational in its time, Salome was received with both wonder and shock, thanks to its theme combining religion and eroticism and its groundbreaking musical language.

Salome

Finnish National Opera and Ballet

Imposing choruses and colossal tableaux accompany a story about intrigues, power play and an affair between stepmother and son in Ottorino Respighi’s last grand opera. Surrounded by political struggles, the figures become entangled in personal conflicts inextricably leading towards catastrophe and the cruel ending of a burning at the stake. For LA FIAMMA, Respighi created music going far beyond his illustrative-seeming “Trilogia romana” for which he is known in concert halls today. Yet in essence, the composer remained true to his colourful tonal language – the result is a musical amalgamation of French impressionism, influences of Russian music and a classicistic reimagining of Italian renaissance music. The archaic story and expansive dimensions of the operatic epos are reminiscent of the genre of the historical epic film, which was gaining popularity at the same time the opera was composed. This meant LA FIAMMA hit the nerve of the time, ensuring international success soon after its premiere. Over the course of decades, the work was slowly forgotten, yet the renowned critic and musicologist Paolo Isotta still praised LA FIAMMA in 2015 as a unique symbiosis of historicism and modernism, claiming its place among the 20th century’s masterworks of musical drama.

The flame

The mermaid Rusalka loves the prince and wants to become a human being in order to be with him forever. With her voice, she pays the witch Ježibaba for the transformation and leaves home and family. Rusalka's appearance with the people initially depresses the prince, but the magical, voiceless being remains a foreign body in the human world and finally the lover turns away from her – which means death for him and banishment for her. In his fairytale opera, premiered in Prague in 1901, Dvořák set to music the contrasting worlds of the ghostly flowing underwater kingdom and the distanced stiff royal court with great music-dramatic verve. With the parable-like material about the value of one's own identity, the meaning of the human soul and the transformation of the main character Rusalka from a romantic mermaid to a loving person capable of suffering without a real home, the internationally working director Christoph Loy makes his debut in the Semperoper.

Rusalka

Semperoper Dresden

Magda leaves her wealthy patron when she meets the young Ruggero. But the feeling of first love cannot be relived. Puccini's "La rondine" (The Swallow), commissioned by Vienna's Carl Theater, is an unusual blend of opera and operetta that puzzled critics: some found it too heavy, others too light. Despite several revisions to the ending, Puccini considered his "problem child" a gem that remains rarely performed to this day. Christof Loy directs this work as an impressive rediscovery. Marco Armiliato conducts.

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La rondine

Opernhaus Zürich

That which Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir or Odilon Redon meant for painting, Claude Debussy meant for music. His compositions, teeming with imagination, manifold colours and fleeting atmospheres, straddle two epochs – Romanticism and Modernism – actually co-forming the borderline itself. At the turn of the 20th century, the arts, music included, underwent ground-breaking changes, with opera being no exception. Pioneers of modern music – such as Debussy and Igor Stravinsky – assumed a rather standoffish attitude to the genre, hesitant as to how to approach the “obsolete form”. Debussy attempted to write several operas, yet only succeeded in a single case. The one and only opera he completed is the today iconic adaptation of the Belgian Symbolist Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pélleas et Mélisande. Debussy’s setting is devoid of conventional grand operatic gesture and effect, giving preference instead to an intimate music drama, with everything decisive happening “between the lines” – in allusions, silence and delicate, symbolic details.

Pelléas et Mélisande

National Theatre Prague

plendor and misery lie close together in the life of the courtesan Violetta Valéry. Celebrated as an enigmatic beauty at lavish Parisian parties, she is forced to abandon her great love for Alfredo due to bourgeois conventions. With this opera about a "whore," as Giuseppe Verdi himself called her, he shocked the audiences of his time. His sharp critique is directed against the hypocritical practices of society, while he imbues Violetta herself, on her path of suffering, with the aura of a saint. With keen psychological insight, director Christof Loy draws inspiration from the aesthetics of Verdi's era. Under the direction of Joana Mallwitz, the young Spanish soprano Marina Monzó makes her debut in the title role.

La traviata

The artist’s all-consuming pursuit of perfection lies at the heart of Franz Schreker’s sumptuously orchestrated opera. We meet the young composer Fritz, driven by a desperate desire to recapture “the distant sound” he once heard so clearly. What begins as artistic longing becomes an obsession. He abandons everything – even his beloved Grete – and sets out into the world in search of the elusive sound, which seems only to fade the further he travels. Fritz fails to understand that the sound he seeks springs from the love of the woman he left behind. The question is whether he will realise this truth before it is too late.

The distant sound

The Royal Danish Playhouse

The monodramas focus on two women as they try to overcome life crises. Abandoned by her lover, the nameless heroine of Poulenc’s ‘tragédie lyrique’ is striving to free herself from her past. Seemingly calm and collected, she reveals her sorry state after a call from the unfaithful man. Glued to a telephone receiver for 40 minutes, she goes through different stages of a mental breakdown, only to give in to the old love. The unnamed woman in Schönberg’s monodrama is in an equally pitiful situation. Lost in a dark forest, she is searching for her lover. Eventually, she escapes the woods and finds her man, but their meeting is not what she expected.

La Voix humaine Another Silence Erwartung

Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera

Based on Gogol’s piece, May Night takes place in a quaint village where the peace is joyfully disturbed by a conflict between a father and his son, the former being opposed to the latter’s wedding. Fortunately, in addition to being charming and fiercely generous, the son is incomparably cunning. Supernatural layers round off the plot: an abandoned house, a lake haunted by a witch, and waters full of magic creatures. Rimsky-Korsakov’s second opera is a fairy tale for all, with humorous twists and turns, ecstatic lovers rendezvousing, and satirical village scenes. Conducted by the dazzling Timur Zangiev, this truly unique piece, replete with charming melodies and traditional music, is making its French debut in a production directed by Christof Loy. Following Peter Grimes and Louise, Christof Loy, who was named Director of the Year at the Opera Awards 2024, tackles this generational conflict with his usual psychological finesse.

May Night

Opéra National De Lyon

Grief turns into a violent quest for revenge. Christof Loy’s nuanced contemporary production returns for its first revival since its 2024 premiere, with Ausrine Stundyte in the murderous title role. Conductor Semyon Bychkov draws out the fierce drama of Strauss’s menacingly modern music.

Director

Christof Loy

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 24 - Oct 15, 2026

La rondine · Opernhaus Zürich

Oct 15 - Nov 19, 2026

Pelléas et Mélisande · Národní divadlo

Dec 20, 2026 - Jan 23, 2027

La traviata · Opernhaus Zürich

7 - 24 Mar, 2027

The distant sound · Det Kongelige Teater

Mar 25 - Apr 4, 2027

La Voix humaine Another Silence Erwartung · Polish National Opera

Past events

Jul 4, 2026

Gran Gala de Zarzuela · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jan 30 - Feb 12, 2026

The Treasure Hunter (Der Schatzgräber) · Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

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