Singer

"It is a simple and tremendous problem of life: that of fidelity", is how Hugo von Hofmannsthal described the core of their third opera together, Ariadne auf Naxos, in a letter to Richard Strauss. To live does not mean to persevere and hold on to what has been lost. If you want to live, you have to let go, forget, get over yourself - constantly transform yourself. This is what a young opera composer experiences in this work when he is confronted with the stubborn wishes of his patron; just like the protagonist of his opera, Ariadne, who, abandoned by her lover, Theseus, expects only death.

Ariadne on Naxos

Hamburg State Opera

Under the face of the wandering moon, spirit and body quarrel in all their greatness and wretchedness until the blood of two bodies flows. Strauss remains close to Wilde's re-creation of the biblical material, which leads Salome from her mother's tool to autonomy. It is she who, in her unfulfilled desire for the liberatingly different, the body of the prophet Jochanaan, seeks revenge and demands his head - a price the male-dominated society around Herod is willing to pay for their dance. Now that Salome holds his severed head in her hands, she can kiss Jochanaan, possess him if not alive, then dead. As if under a burning glass, Strauss pours Oscar Wilde's demonic dramaturgy into sound like an eruption of the psyche, accompanying his protagonist from her failed escape from the decadence of her existence to her death.

EPSG:4326

Salome

Staatsoper Hamburg

Tired of the big city and its abundance of parties and women, the dandy Eugene Onegin travels to the countryside, where he meets Tatjana, the daughter of an estate owner. Dreaming of romantic love as described in books, she thinks she has found it in Onegin. However, he is unwilling to be tied down. After brusquely rejecting her, it is only years later that Onegin comes to understand his awful mistake and his lack of courage. Yet the realization comes too late: Tatjana has already become the wife of Prince Gremin. Tchaikovsky based his touching and intimate masterpiece from 1878 on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin. The opera not only illuminates the torn inner lives of the protagonists, but also the pitfalls of modern relationships. Markus Bothe breaks up the story's chronology using flashbacks of the various characters to create an allusive series of images in which memory, mood and the drama of the present flow seamlessly into one another.

Eugen Onegin

Semperoper Dresden

This impactful opera is an experience unlike anything seen before at the Finnish National Opera. In an uprising on a farm, a group of animals overthrow their farmer’s tyrannical reign. Little by little, their new society begins to mirror human civilisation, and their original principles of equality are cast aside.

Animal Farm

Finnish National Opera and Ballet

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

Schiller Theater

»The Nose« is the stroke of genius of the just 22-year-old Dmitri Shostakovich based on the novel of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. While Gogol's novella is a satire on tsarist officials, the opera, which premiered in 1930, brings to the stage an entire society in which an opportunistic official falls into the clutches of bureaucracy, a nose becomes a media sensation, and the police closely monitor its citizens. With dance music, balaleika sounds, Russian church music and the first pure percussion piece in music history, »The Nose« is no less grotesque than the strange occurrences it tells: the nose of college assessor Kovalev suddenly disappeared for no reason.

Tenor

James Kryshak

Events

Past events

Nov 16 - Dec 4, 2025

Ariadne on Naxos · Staatsoper Hamburg

5 - 12 Oct, 2025

Salome · Staatsoper Hamburg

Future and recently performed repertoire

1. Jude in Salome by Strauss

Staatsoper Hamburg

Ein Geheimagent in The Nose by Shostakovich

Semperoper Dresden

Triquetra in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky

Semperoper Dresden

William Desbiens in Ariadne on Naxos by Strauss

Staatsoper Hamburg

About

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