The mermaid Rusalka loves the prince - a human! She wants to risk everything, the loss of her family and her home, to become a human woman. Transformed by the witch Ježibaba, she must face the prince in silence, telling him of her love only through her looks and gestures. If the prince does not fall in love with her, he must die and she must live as an outcast from then on. Rusalka's appearance initially beguiles the prince, but the magical, voiceless creature remains a foreign body in the human world, and eventually her lover turns his back on her...

Rusalka

German Oper am Rhein

Sparkling music and sparkling melodies are on the programme of the New Year's Concert - with duets, arias and ensembles from popular operettas, including several evergreens of this champagne-sparkling genre, from global successes such as "The Land of Smiles" or "The Merry Widow", from "The Csárdás Princess" or "The Bat". The New Year's Concert is also a musical homage to a famous Duisburg artist, because with his arias, tenor Sebastian Kohlhepp follows in the footsteps of the legendary Rudolf Schock, who was born in 1915 as the son of a Duisburg dock worker. With his radiant tenor voice, he has captivated an audience of millions and is still considered one of the best operetta tenors of the last century.

The operetta gala is led by the expert conductor Srba Dinić, who is already known to the audience in Duisburg from the “Philharmonic Debate” in March 2024. Also no strangers are soprano Mandy Fredrich , who has been a guest with the orchestra several times, and mezzo-soprano Sarah Ferede, a member of the ensemble of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.

Operetta Gala New Year's Concert 2025

Philharmonie Mercatorhalle

A chalk circle, a child in the centre. Each child's arm is pulled by a woman who claims to be the mother. "The right mother will have the right strength," says Prince Pao - it will be the one who lets go of her child so as not to tear it apart. By the time Haitang is able to hold her child in her arms again, she has an odyssey of injustice under her belt. Abandoned, sold, mistreated, slandered and convicted of murder, it is nothing short of a miracle that justice unexpectedly receives strong intercession here.

Der Kreidekreis

The Queen of the Night asks Tamino to free Pamina from the clutches of the supposed villain Sarastro. And so, together with the bird catcher Papageno, he sets out to become a hero. But there are many surprises awaiting him on his adventurous rescue mission... Barrie Kosky's multimedia staging, which the director developed together with the British artists' collective “1927”, has long enjoyed cult status around the world. The imaginative interplay of scene, music and video animation elegantly transposes Mozart's opera into the present day.

The Magic Flute

In order to foil Alberich’s bid for power, the ruler of the gods Wotan has fathered nine Valkyries, who have the task of gathering an army of fallen heroes for him and bringing them to Valhalla. His intention is that his son Siegmund, conceived from a relationship with a mortal woman, will be the free-born hero who wins back the ring for him. However, Siegmund unwittingly upsets Wotan’s plan by falling in love with his twin sister Sieglinde, a union that gives birth to Siegfried. When Wotan’s favourite daughter Brünnhilde disobeys her father’s order to seal Siegmund’s downfall out of compassion, he banishes her to the rock of fire from which only the strongest hero will be able to rescue her. This will be Siegfried.

The Valkyrie

Theater Duisburg

The king dies. Amfortas, leader of the Grail Brotherhood, is tormented by a wound that will not heal - struck by his arch-enemy Klingsor, to whom he also lost the Holy Spear of Christ that was guarded by the Brotherhood. Day after day, the Knights of the Grail are forced to watch helplessly as Amfortas dies of pain and guilt. Only a prophecy gives them hope: a “pure fool” will one day redeem the suffering king through his compassion and win back the Holy Spear, which the fallen Grail knight Klingsor guards in his magic garden. And then Parsifal knocks on the gates of the Grail Castle...

Parsifal

A trail of violence runs through the cursed dynasty of the Atrides long before this opera begins: Elektra's grandfather fed his own sons to his brother, her father Agamemnon sacrificed Elektra's sister Iphigenia, the desperate mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisth slaughtered Agamemnon with an axe in the bath. The children cannot find peace either: Elektra cannot mourn, desperate and raw, she dwells on her hatred. Like must be repaid in kind, the murderous mother and her lover must die. While her sister Chrysotemis refuses to join her, her brother Orest is to take vengeance for their beloved father: The next generation picks up the axe...

Elektra

In 1821, the unemployed wigmaker Johann Christian Woyzeck stabs his sweetheart to death in Leipzig. The trial against him drags on for years until, after his sanity has been examined twice, all appeals for clemency are rejected and Woyzeck is sentenced to death. Alban Berg saw Georg Büchner's dramatization of this case at the Vienna Kammerspiele in 1914. In the face of the outbreak of the World War I, the signs of human denaturation, which Berg addresses in his opera without turning them into blatant social criticism, became more evident.

Sarah Ferede

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 10, 2025 - Mar 13, 2026

The Magic Flute · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Feb 22 - Apr 5, 2026

The Valkyrie · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Feb 28 - Apr 3, 2026

Parsifal · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Apr 7 - Jun 4, 2026

Elektra · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Jun 2 - Jul 1, 2026

Wozzeck · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Past events

Jun 10 - Jul 11, 2025

Rusalka · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Jan 1, 2025

Operetta Gala New Year's Concert 2025 · Duisburger Philharmoniker

Future and recently performed repertoire

Marie in Wozzeck by Berg

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

2nd Queen in The Magic Flute by Mozart

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Kundry in Parsifal by Wagner

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

3. Maid in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Yü-Pei, seine Gattin ersten Ranges in Der Kreidekreis by Zemlinsky

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Sieglinde in The Valkyrie by Wagner

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

About

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