Who doesn’t know the heart-breaking story of the young couple from Verona? Two people from feuding families who love each other so much that, after flouting tradition and their rigid family structures, they have the courage to pay for this outrage with death. Romeo and Juliet want to do more than just break the rules – they wish to love and to live freely. The version of William Shakespeare’s play, published in 1597, has been adapted many times for theatre, ballet, film, musicals and opera, including „Roméo et Juliette“ by Charles Gounod.

Roméo et Juliette

Semperoper Dresden

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

Who doesn’t know the heart-breaking story of the young couple from Mantua? Two people from feuding families who love each other so much that, after flouting tradition and their rigid family structures, they have the courage to pay for this outrage with death. Romeo and Juliet want to do more than just break the rules – they wish to love and to live freely. The version of William Shakespeare’s play, published in 1597, has been adapted many times for theatre, ballet, film, musicals and opera, including „Roméo et Juliette“ by Charles Gounod.

Richard Wagner’s »Lohengrin«, which premiered in Weimar in 1850, is closely associated with Dresden: Inspired by the charming landscape around the nearby village of Graupa, Wagner began the opera in 1846 when employed as Kapellmeister to the royal court, completing the work in the Saxon capital in 1849. Since its first performance in Dresden ten years later, the work has been heard over 850 times at the Semperoper. This production from 1983 is a true classic, thrilling audiences year after year. Retaining the work’s roots in both the 19th century and the Middle Ages, director Christine Mielitz tells the story of Elsa, unlawfully accused of murder and at the mercy of her adversaries in the duchy of Brabant, who is rescued by the mysterious Swan Knight. This is a tragic tale of a woman fighting for recognition but also for knowledge. At the end comes the bitter realization that her justifiable wish to know the name of the person to whom she owes her happiness will result in his downfall.

Lohengrin

Once the best marksman in the world, Max is on a losing streak. A single shot will determine his betrothal to Agathe – a much too important matter to leave to chance. At midnight in the Wolf’s Glen, Max, aided by the evil Casper, casts seven magic bullets which never miss their target, thus sealing a pact with the devil. Following the work’s premiere in 1821, Carl Maria von Weber proclaimed: »I’ve hit the hit the bullseye«. Soon »Der Freischütz« became regarded as the romantic German opera par excellence. Weber’s music reproduces the beauty of the German forest as well as its nighttime eeriness to create an atmosphere of uncertainty, doubt and fear. In his production, director Axel Köhler not only describes the fate of a young man driven to extremes by a fear of failure, but also paints the image of a society which, having lost its bearings, seeks stability in ritual and hierarchy. 

Der Freischütz Carl Maria von Weber

How terrible must life be if you can’t laugh? Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges is about a king who wishes to help his sick son. But only one thing can cure the malady of the heir to the throne: laughter. While the doctors are trying their luck, Truffaldino and Fata Morgana get into a fight, during which the latter is knocked over. When her mishap causes the Prince to laugh, she quickly places a curse on him: he is destined to fall in love with three oranges. The Prince and Truffaldino immediately set off on a hair-raising journey that finally takes them to a desert – a trip that can be seen as a balancing act between fantasy and reality. Here parody is tinged with tragedy and a touch of the grotesque.

The Love for Three Oranges

What does it feel like when, in an instant, your life is turned upside down? That’s what happens to Christine, the wife of court music director Robert Storch. A misdelivered letter leads her to believe that her husband is betraying her in a most shameful manner. She goes on an emotional rollercoaster ride, and the story seems to be veering towards a tragic end ..

Intermezzo

»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.

The Nose

Semper Zwei

The celebrated singer Tosca lives only for art, until political intrigue suddenly disturbs her life and that of her lover, the painter Cavaradossi: When Cavaradossi hides the political refugee Angelotti, he is targeted by the unscrupulous police chief Scarpia, who has long had his eye on Tosca. To save Cavaradossi, Tosca not only has to betray Angelotti, but also give herself to Scarpia. Premiered in 1900, Puccini’s »Tosca« is practically unique in its close interweaving of political power and personal passions.

Semper Essenz: Tosca

The Spanish royal court is gripped by an icy coldness: For reasons of politics, the heir to the throne, Don Carlo has lost his bride Elisabetta to his father, the Spanish king. The crown prince is also thwarted in his political ambitions. The king, on the other hand, is powerless against the fiercely devout Grand Inquisitor. It seems that only Carlos’s friend Rodrigo can break free of these political and private constraints. But his bold dream of freedom leads to catastrophe. Giuseppe Verdi explores his great theme, the incompatibility of politics and private happiness, through almost all the characters in this opera, which premiered in 1867. For modern audiences it paints an oppressively topical social panorama. In cooperation with the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Semperoper presents »Don Carlo« in the four-act Italian version of 1884, supplemented by a new instrumental prologue by composer Manfred Trojahn, which sets up the background to the drama.

Don Carlo

The celebrated singer Tosca lives only for art, until political intrigue suddenly disturbs her life and that of her lover, the painter Cavaradossi: When Cavaradossi hides the political refugee Angelotti, he is targeted by the unscrupulous police chief Scarpia, who has long had his eye on Tosca. To save Cavaradossi, Tosca not only has to betray Angelotti, but also give herself to Scarpia. Premiered in 1900, Puccini’s »Tosca« is practically unique in its close interweaving of political power and personal passions. The German premiere of this opera about love, jealousy, betrayal and tyranny was held in Dresden in 1902. Director Johannes Schaaf has found a timeless narrative style for his staging.

Tosca

According to his servant Leporello, Don Giovanni has already loved no fewer than 2,064 women; the number of those he has left with broken hearts cannot be any less. This masterpiece about the charming yet unscrupulous lothario Don Giovanni became (in the words of Richard Wagner) the „opera of all operas“, thanks to the inspired collaboration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. The work, which premiered in Prague in 1787, is more than just a tale of love and seduction, lust and immorality, rape, murder and revenge. Expressly called a „funny drama“ by Mozart, the narrative alternates between tragedy and comedy, between tales of sex-and-crime and theatrum mundi. Don Giovanni, with his passion for breaking rules and taboos, does not shy away from challenging the Dead and even Fate itself. In his staging for Dresden, Andreas Kriegenburg highlights the contemporary relevance of the characters’ endless greed for life, love and beauty.

Don Giovanni

Did Richard Wagner already know when, in The Flying Dutchman, he first explored the notion of redemption, that this would end up being the central concern of his art? In his final opera, Parsifal, which was first performed in Bayreuth in 1882, it is not just a single person but society as a whole that awaits a saviour – buoyed by the hope of one day meeting the One who will fulfil this role. Parsifal’s qualification for this tremendous task is that he has become “knowing through compassion” – a process that takes many years, perhaps an entire lifetime. But there are forces trying to hinder him on his path. Will Parsifal be willing to place himself at the service of the community? Parsifal, which has been called a “stage consecration festival”, is still an overwhelming experience today. Can art truly help us find redemption?

Parsifal

First performed in Dresden in 1924, Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo provides all manner of insights into his turbulent married life.

Tilmann Rönnebeck

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 30, 2025 - Jul 11, 2026

Roméo et Juliette · Semperoper Dresden

Feb 21 - Mar 20, 2026

Don Giovanni · Semperoper Dresden

Mar 22 - Apr 6, 2026

Parsifal · Semperoper Dresden

23 - 30 Apr, 2026

Intermezzo · Semperoper Dresden

Past events

Oct 30, 2025 - Jul 11, 2026

Roméo et Juliette · Semperoper Dresden

Aug 29 - Sep 12, 2025

Eugen Onegin · Semperoper Dresden

Future and recently performed repertoire

Le Duc de Vérone in Roméo et Juliette by Gounod

Semperoper Dresden

A chamber singer in Intermezzo by Strauss

Semperoper Dresden

Ein Kammersänger in Intermezzo by Strauss

Semperoper Dresden

Farfarello in The Love for Three Oranges by Prokofiev

Semperoper Dresden

A Newspaper Clerk in The Nose by Shostakovich

Semperoper Dresden

Le Duc de Vérone in Roméo et Juliette by Gounod

Semperoper Dresden

2nd Gralsritter in Parsifal by Wagner

Semperoper Dresden

Un Frate in Don Carlos by Verdi

Semperoper Dresden

The Commander in Don Giovanni by Mozart

Semperoper Dresden

Grid in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky

Semperoper Dresden

Sciarrone in Tosca by Puccini

Semperoper Dresden

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