Set Designer

Richard Wagner's redemption operas continually invite new interpretations. Joana Mallwitz was already deeply involved with the composer's oeuvre during her time as General Music Director in Nuremberg. Director and musician Johannes Erath will stage the Baden-Baden Lohengrin production. He began his directing career as an assistant to Willy Decker, worked at the Semperoper in Dresden among other venues, and has been awarded the Götz Friedrich Prize and the Austrian Music Theater Prize.

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Richard Wagner: Lohengrin

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

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

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Violetta is the most sought-after courtesan of the Parisian demimonde. However, her encounter with Alfredo makes her pleasure-seeking life seem questionable: they fall in love and try to build a life for themselves, far from the fast pleasures of the city. Her past, however, catches up with Violetta. Alfredo’s father persuades her that a separation is the only way to restore his family honour. Alfredo, unaware of the true reasons for her decision, insults Violetta in public. When they are finally reunited, Violetta has run out of time.

La Traviata

Staatsoper Hamburg

For Leonora, the troubadour Manrico's song holds the promise and the fervor of love, while Manrico's rival Count Luna perceives threat and danger in it. Verdi's opera is a celebration of Italian opera singing at its finest - it is no coincidence that the title character is himself a singer. And yet, for the composer, Azucena, Manrico's mother, was the real main character. Il trovatore is rich in dramatic complications and intense emotions, which Verdi juxtaposes harshly in images and scenes. The tragedy unfolds relentlessly before our eyes and ears until the truth is revealed in the last seconds of the opera.

Il trovatore

Hamburg State Opera

A shrewd politician, a jilted bride disguised as a man, and three upper crust, eager to marry gentlemen make for all kinds of confusion in Handel’s tragicomedy. The libretto drew on texts by the Roman poet Silvio Stampiglia, who prefered writing silly stories and biting comedy to moralising plots and pathos. His work’s got nothing to do with Partenope, the last Siren Odysseus encountered on his Odyssey. In Handel’s opera she’s foundress and Queen of Naples, who’s being courted by three men. The first, shy Armindo, waits a long time before declaring his love for the Queen. The second, Emilio, arrives with his army, ordering the Queen to choose between marriage or war. Partenope beats him in battle, has him arrested, offering him friendship instead.

Partenope

Bockenheimer Depot

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

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.

Set Designer

Herbert Murauer

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 15 - Nov 19, 2026

Pelléas et Mélisande · Národní divadlo

Past events

Mar 28 - Apr 5, 2026

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin · Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

Nov 27 - Dec 10, 2025

Fedora · Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

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