Singer

As in all operas by Puccini, TOSCA is an illustration of how human attentiveness and pleasures of the palate can be mutually dependent if the composer’s artistic intentions become a benchmark for directorial interpretation. Puccini’s humane attentiveness is essentially dependent on an outcry and/or a sense of resignation. The pity inherent in his music does not content itself with abstract gestures; it wants to unsettle, to bring about change. Out of the “small things” named by Puccini as the source of his inspiration and the focus of his music “big things” grow – as long as we want them. Puccini’s choice of material owes something, directly or indirectly, to the spirit of Zola, Gorki and Hauptmann, and the link between that material and his compositional style places him likewise as a direct descendant of Verdi and an exponent of verismo. He was also known as an admirer of Wagner, although a Wagner imitator he assuredly was not.

Tosca

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Lasso didn’t choose to have the childhood he had, being brought up by Popa, a frazzled single mother who not only has her son to take care of but also a rowdy pub to manage. Which is why Lasso leaves home to seek his fortune. Along the way he hears about Princess Scharada and her three riddles. A man can ask her three questions: if she fails to answer them correctly, he gets to marry her and rule the realm; if she solves the riddles, he is put to death. But whatever happens, Lasso will not only have travelled the world and crossed paths with robbers, wild boars, astrologers, clairvoyants, scheming politicians and stern ladies-in-waiting – he’ll also have found a great friend and companion. In his THE THREE RIDDLES, an erratic blend of fairytale, social drama, road movie and full-scale opera, composer Detlev Glanert presents a witty, zany and slightly scary story of two very different children, who team up to hold their own in the big, wide world and find their own way.

The Three Riddles

For his first commission for the Paris Opéra Verdi demanded a libretto that was “immense, passionate and original”. What he eventually got from star author Eugène Scribe was a text whose political edginess rivalled the grand opéras of Giacomo Meyerbeer, with whom Scribe had collaborated on LES HUGUENOTS and LE PROPHETE. Like these two works, LES VÊPRES SICILIENNES explored a subject that was not only historical but also highly topical. Parallels could easily be drawn between the “Sicilian Vespers” uprising in 1282 against the island’s French occupiers and the most conspicuous of France’s mid-19th-century expansionist ventures, the conquest and colonialization of Algeria, which began in 1830 and was dogged by an ongoing series of brutally quelled revolts.

Les Vêpres Siciliennes

DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG was Richard Wagner’s only light-hearted opera and remains one of his most popular works. This notwithstanding, MEISTERSINGER is also the musical manifesto of a German national art movement and, as such, has accumulated so much baggage over the years that people are apt to lose sight of the opera’s essence – a jolly and coherent comedy with its helter-skelter storyline centring on illusion and reality, love, ageing and the plying of one’s art – and this despite the core theme of a life dominated by music determining not only the cast of characters but also the action of the piece. The members of the master-singers guild have convened to make music in accordance with their strict rulebook. One of the singers, the wealthy Veit Pogner, has granted his daughter Eva the freedom to choose which suitor she will marry – with the proviso that it be a master singer, in other words the winner of a public singing competition. A pity, then, that Eva is in love with Walther von Stolzing, who is talented but devoid of formal training. Nonetheless he takes part in the competition, aided and abetted by master singer Hans Sachs, who has to forego his love for Eva in the process.

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg

Audiences exiting the theatre after the world premiere of Richard Strauss’s eighth opera INTERMEZZO felt wrong-footed and out-of-sorts. Instead of drawing on classical material or mythology, the composer had served up a straight story with him and his wife as characters, showing contempt for the boundary between private life and literary work. What they hadn’t realised was that Strauss had once again demonstrated that he was not only hip to musical-theatre trends but could also make them his own: for INTERMEZZO is Strauss’s response to 1920s audiences’ desire for “modern” opera subjects and can be seen as part of a line of avant-garde works by the likes of Arnold Schönberg (VON HEUTE AUF MORGEN) and Paul Hindemith (NEUES VOM TAGE). Unlike them, however, Strauss remains true to his classical sound and creates another of his famous soprano roles, shimmering with cantilenas, in the form of the main character, Christine, the fictional composer’s wife.

Interlude

Long after the Paris world premiere in 1896 Oscar Wilde’s tragedy “Salomé” remained a thorn in the flesh of the establishment across Europe. In Wilhelminian Germany and the Danube Monarchy, too, official art adjudicators considered the subject “repulsive” and the text “an insult to morality”. In the minds of the guardians of public morals the New Testament story of Herod’s daughter was as ill-suited to the stage as it was to pictorial representation, which was experiencing a boom at the time. Salomé’s stepfather, Herod, the Roman’s client king of Judea, Galilee and Samaria who is said to have ordered the massacre of the innocents around Bethlehem, persuades her to dance for him. Encouraged by her mother, she demands to be given the head of John the Baptist as a reward.

Salome

Coachman Chapelou gets an offer he can’t refuse, on his wedding day: The intendant of the Royal Opera wants to sign him up for the French King’s »smaller scale entertainments« … How will Chapelou’s newly wedded wife Madeleine react? Does a great singing career beckon the coachman in Paris? Will the bride and groom ever meet again?

Adolphe Adam’s sparkling Opéra comique was an international box office hit after its world premiere in Paris in 1836: People whistled the catchy tunes along streets in European capitals and quoted punchlines from the dialogues in taverns. Even Richard Wagner sometimes hummed the well-known »Postillion song«, with its spectacular high D, when he couldn’t sleep at night. The score of this all but forgotten, masterful comedy, reveals cleverly crafted ensemble and chorus numbers in addition to fiendishly high notes and coloratura.

EPSG:4326

Le postillon de Lonjumeau

Oper Frankfurt

“As for the effect that a work has as a piece of theatre, I’d say that RIGOLETTO is the best material that I’ve ever set to music […]. It has very powerful scenes, there’s temperament, pathos, a lot of variety.” [Verdi to Antonio Somma, 22nd April 1853]

Rigoletto

Suffused with the spirit of the French Revolution, FIDELIO explores issues of individual and collective freedom in the face of tyrannical suppression. For his one venture into opera Beethoven chose a political event rooted in the French tradition of rescue opera. It tells the story of a fearless woman, Leonore, who triggers the end of the old order by having her husband released from prison, where he has been detained on a whim. Far from evincing Beethoven’s inability to compose a coherent opera, this mixed bag of genre elements – German light opera, heartfelt arias, exquisite orchestral interludes and a symphonic close – reflects his revolutionary idea of dramaturgical opposites and subversion of form. The further Leonore descends into the depths of the dungeon, the clearer the existential core of the drama becomes. In an explosive choral and symphonic finale, which, with its quote from Schiller’s “Ode to Joy”, foreshadows Beethoven’s “Ninth”, the uncompromising affirmation of liberty, human rights and humanist ideals bursts forth. The work has repeatedly been appropriated for political ends - on both sides of the spectrum – with Leonore acquiring iconic status. Yet Beethoven’s musical vision of a humanist society still manages to thwart all attempts to encapsulate the opera in simplified interpretations.

Fidelio

“Blame it on the champagne, tra la la la la !” That’s the half-truth that the protagonists in Johann Strauss’s THE BAT sign up to at the end of a drink-fuelled night of mistaken identities and erotic escapades. But alcohol is only partly to blame; the confusion is largely due to the wiles of the humiliated Dr Falke, who was once exposed to small-town ridicule dressed in the costume of a bat and is now seizing his chance to avenge himself on his ‘good pal’, bon vivant Gabriel von Eisenstein. And so it is that the maid disguises herself as an actress, the wife as a Hungarian countess and Eisenstein himself as a French marquess and off they trot to Prince Orlofsky’s masked ball. That they end up bewailing their fate in jail early the next morning is less down to champagne than to the natural course of events. In THE BAT Johann Strauss pulled off a work that proved to be the prototypical Viennese operetta, bursting with waltzes and polkas and oozing wicked irony. Inspired by Offenbach’s opéras buffes from Paris, Strauss’s work was merciless in the way it held up a mirror to the bourgeois salon-going public - and many audience members recognised themselves in the absurd antics onstage.

Die Fledermaus

Director Christof Loy has already helped four little-known operas from the early 20th century make a successful comeback at the Deutsche Oper Berlin: Erich Wolfgang Korngold's DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE and Riccardo Zandonai's FRANCESCA DA RIMINI were followed by other long-forgotten operatic treasures: Franz Schreker's DER SCHATZGRÄBER in 2022 and finally Ottorino Respighi's LA FIAMMA in 2024.

The Treasure Hunter (Der Schatzgräber)

Scarcely any other work of world literature breathes music in the same manner as William Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream”. Elves dance through the night in the summery enchanted forest and sing the fairy queen Titania to sleep. Music accompanies the wedding celebration of the royal couple Hippolyta and Theseus, as well as the young lovers Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius – when they have finally found each other in the midsummer's night after an erotic cycle of desire and disappointment, of confusion and disarray. And music rings out in the crassly humourous game in the play “Pyramus and Thisbe”, performed by six "highly skilled" craftsmen.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A garret in Paris on a cold winter’s day around Christmas. Rodolfo, a writer, and Marcello, a painter, are working on their masterpieces. They have no money to buy food, pay the rent or fuel the stove. Colline, a philosopher, returns from the pawn shop empty handed, having failed to get rid of some books. Only Schaunard, a musician, has managed to come up with some victuals, kindling, cigars and cash, so off they go to Café Momus - without Rodolfo, who’s trying to work. Mimì, the embroiderer from next door, arrives to ask for a match to light her candle with. She collapses and loses her key; cue for Rodolfo to fall in love with Mimì, who is terminally ill with TB, although he dumps her two months later because the prospect of her ailment getting steadily worse in her freezing home is too much for him. Six months go by. Musetta, Marcello’s ex, arrives with Mimì, whose condition is grave. Musetta sells some earrings with a view to buying medicine; Colline gives up his coat. Gratitude and happiness for a short while. Rodolfo thinks Mimì is sleeping and her body regenerating, …but in fact she’s dead.

Bass-baritone

Joel Allison

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 11, 2025 - Feb 15, 2026

The Three Riddles · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Nov 5, 2025 - Apr 23, 2026

Tosca · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Dec 20, 2025 - Jan 3, 2026

Die Fledermaus · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jan 30 - Feb 12, 2026

The Treasure Hunter (Der Schatzgräber) · Deutsche Oper Berlin

May 2 - Jun 6, 2026

A Midsummer Night’s Dream · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Nov 5, 2025 - Apr 23, 2026

Tosca · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Oct 11, 2025 - Feb 15, 2026

The Three Riddles · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

Sacristan in Tosca by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

1st Nazarene in Salome by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Commercial Councillor in Intermezzo by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Colline in La bohème by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Fritz Kothner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The count of Ceprano in Rigoletto by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Angelotti in Tosca by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Frank, a prison governor in Die Fledermaus by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Snug in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Britten

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Don Pizarro in Fidelio by Beethoven

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Bijou / Alcindor in Le postillon de Lonjumeau by Adam

Oper Frankfurt

Rober in Les vêpres siciliennes by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Mr Subtle, a gambler / Tartarus, a donkey in The Three Riddles by Glanert

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The schoolmaster / The mayor in Der Schatzgräber by Schreker

Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

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