Singer

“Don‘t you know the horrible dark place, don’t you know the evil one lives there?” Hastily, their parents set out for the woods to save Hansel and Gretel from the witch Rosina Leckermaul. As they feared, the children have got lost in the woods and found the gingerbread house. They cannot resist the sweet temptation – and fall straight into the trap of the witch, who likes children so much she could eat them up… literally.
As in most tales of the Brothers Grimm, in Engelbert Humperdinck’s setting of the fairytale all ends well: until that point, however, Humperdinck’s romantic music accompanies the children deep into the dark forest of legend. Here it invokes magical beings, calls on 14 angels to protect the siblings and allows the witch to ride her broomstick through the air.

Hansel and Gretel

Hamburg State Opera

At the age of almost 80, Giuseppe Verdi, who had already achieved mythical status, once again achieved sensational success with this opera. Using the brilliant libretto of the much younger Arrigo Boito as a starting point, he created a masterpiece of comic opera after five decades of tragic works. Although it is based on the same material as Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Verdi succeeded in writing a distinct, subversive version of the comedy.

Falstaff

Bebelplatz

During times of historical upheaval, the victors are filled with euphoric jubilation while fear spreads on the side of the losers. When cheerfulness grips the figures in Mozart’s piece, it is the swan song, full of schadenfreude, of dying structures, ancient privileges and traditional manners – including those between man and woman. Mozart (and Beaumarchais) hold the balance on the threshold between eras – as artists en route to self-marketing, as portraitists of their times, by precisely rendering a society whose balance is shifting, making Almaviva a ridiculous figure. His class is losing political power, and he compensates for this loss by becoming a slave to his sexual desire. The wind is blowing from the past, giving wing to Walter Benjamin’s angel of history. It is a storm for the winners, and for the losers a mere melancholy breeze. The angel sees nothing but ruins.

EPSG:4326

Le Nozze di Figaro

Staatsoper Hamburg

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.

Salome

Inspired by his romantic love for Mathilde Wesendonck, Richard Wagner created one of the most beautiful operas in music history. This season, the Hamburg State Opera revives its legendary production by Ruth Berghaus of 1988.

Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde)

The outsider Herman loves Liza, who is engaged to Prince Yeletsky. Herman is a passionate gambler: he is desperate to win a fortune and reputation in order to win Liza’s heart. When he learns that her grandmother knows the secret of the three winning cards, fate takes its course.

Pique Dame

Sir John Falstaff is an anarchist who obeys only the reign of his own enjoyment, an egoist who feeds only his power-hunger and his own flesh, and who would prefer to raze the small-minded morals of his contemporaries like the walls of a fortress – by seducing two women at the same time. Needless to say, his plan is thwarted, but those trying to expose him also fail to emerge unruffled from the confusion they unleash around him – which only the audience can keep track of, barely. “Tutto nel mondo è burla,” but these jokes are only funny because falling into the abyss actually does pose quite a serious risk. Arrigo Boito, the librettist of “Otello”, distilled a sophisticated, ingenious libretto from Shakespeare’s original, driving Verdi to highly complex compositional heights.

The poet E. T. A. Hoffmann as the protagonist of his own fantastic tales: In his encounter with three women - Olympia, Antonia, and Giulietta - he searches in vain for love for love and for himself. Will he draw the strength for art from his failure in life? art from his failures in life? Or will he fail in himself, even in alcohol? Like in a kaleidoscope, ever new constellations and shimmering colors constellations and shimmering colors German romanticism and French esprit.

Les Contes d'Hoffmann

This opera is the world in a theatrical nutshell: it deals with growing older, with trials and tribulations, with intransparent decisions. One person searches for individuality, another is too lazy to do so. Others postulate that the community is the only adequate place for the individual. Power has either been legitimised by long tradition or usurped by new regimes. Values such as assimilation and loyalty are set against self-assertiveness and independence. There is loving and dreaming, cheating and trusting. Suicides are prevented, tests passed, adventures survived. Who is right? Who has been wronged? The world of the magic flute is opaque, and everyone is looking for a pathway: within it, into it or out of it. Who holds the reigns? Who can be trusted? Could it be music?

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

The years between the death of Ivan the Terrible and the ascension of the Romanov family to the throne are known in Russia as the “Time of Troubles”. During this time, Boris Godunov strives to gain power with an iron determination. However, the ghosts of the past catch up with him and he dies a madman, abandoned and betrayed by everyone. In the meantime, the country sinks ever deeper into corruption, putsches and intrigue. A new “Time of Troubles” dawned during Modest Mussorgsky’s lifetime: the old order faltered and could not survive, everyone felt it. During a period of political upheaval and shaken by dramatic developments in his private life, Mussorgsky created a work about the arrogance of power and the eroticism of betrayal – as contradictory and fascinating as his personality itself.

Boris Godunov

Siegfried, the son of Sieglinde, who was saved in Die Walküre, and Siegmund, who was killed, grows up on the edge of the world with Alberich's brother Mime. Mime hopes that Siegfried will fight for the powerful ring for him. But the ignorant Siegfried turns against his foster father, and after he has taken the ring from the killed giant Fafner, he also kills Mime. Guided by a forest bird, he awakens the sleeping Brünnhilde. Now the two could save Wotan's world of gods – if love weren't stronger than political reason. »Siegfried« is the most theatrical part of Wagner's tetralogy »The Ring of the Nibelung«. Director Willy Decker therefore created his Dresden stage cosmos as a theater within a theatre. However, those who flaunt themselves on the stage and who take the position of observer

Tenor

Jürgen Sacher

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 21, 2024 - Jan 3, 2026

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) · Staatsoper Hamburg

Apr 29, 2025 - Mar 13, 2026

Pique Dame · Staatsoper Hamburg

Nov 30 - Dec 25, 2025

Hansel and Gretel · Staatsoper Hamburg

Feb 7 - Mar 13, 2026

Pique Dame · Staatsoper Hamburg

Past events

Nov 30 - Dec 25, 2025

Hansel and Gretel · Staatsoper Hamburg

Nov 20 - Dec 7, 2025

Falstaff · Staatsoper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

Open your eyes in The Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach

Staatsoper Hamburg

Czekalinsky in Pique Dame by Tchaikovsky

Staatsoper Hamburg

Dr. Caius in Falstaff by Verdi

Staatsoper Hamburg

Jude in Salome by Strauss

Staatsoper Hamburg

Lying in Tristan und Isolde by Wagner

Staatsoper Hamburg

First Armored Man in Die Zauberflöte by Mozart

Staatsoper Hamburg

Crispy witch in Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck

Staatsoper Hamburg

Missail in Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky

Staatsoper Hamburg

Mime in Siegfried by Wagner

Semperoper Dresden

Don Curzio in Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart

Staatsoper Hamburg

Dr. Cajus in Falstaff by Verdi

Staatsoper Berlin

Czekalinsky in Pique Dame by Tchaikovsky

Staatsoper Hamburg

About

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