Singer

The two middle sections of the tetralogy set out two ways of experiencing life. On the one hand we are presented in THE VALKYRIE with Brünnhilde, whose maturation process takes her from her discovery of sorrow and empathy to a conscious reflection on what it is to be human. By contrast, Siegfried’s path is mapped out solely as a function of his sensory experience. Where initially the young man’s self-image stems only from his exploration of his own boundless strength, other senses and sensibilities soon come to bear, along with an awakening sexuality. SIEGFRIED presents an encounter not only between man and woman but between two principles – Siegfried’s innate, unquestioned vigour on one side and Brünnhilde’s wisdom born of observation on the other. And as these two diametrical forces unite in a love clinch, the end of the opera seems to be presenting the basis for a renewal of human society.

Der Ring des Nibelungen – Siegfried

Deutsche Oper Berlin

With the hegemony of the gods at its zenith at the close of THE RHINEGOLD and the gods ensconced in the castle of Valhalla, trouble is brewing in THE VALKYRIE. The mortals are power-crazed, mistrust and materialism rule and all that the gods can think about is enforcing the old codes rather than questioning their raison d’être. Siblings Siegmund and Sieglinde are condemned to death because there is no place for their special brand of love in society. Brünnhilde, a Valkyrie, is charmed by them and dares to defy her father Wotan’s sentence by taking the pair under her wing. In THE VALKYRIE Wagner makes it plain whose side he is on: in the big love scene between Siegmund and Sieglinde, in which the elemental force of love outpunches all social mores, and in the evolution of Brünnhilde’s character, whose conduct is at first motivated by intuitive sympathy but morphs into deliberate action as a protest against inhumanity and injustice.

Der Ring des Nibelungen – Die Walküre

Richard Wagner considered RHEINGOLD a "pre-evening" to his stage play DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, a label that certainly deliberately refers to the prologues of the Baroque operas. Because here, as well as there, the gods are in control and create the conditions under which the fates of man will be decided. And just like the ancient deities of Monteverdi, their northern counterparts of Wagner are beings who embody the drives of human existence. All of the feelings, urges and thoughts that determine our own existence also appear in the two and a half hours of RHEINGOLD. Starting with the innocent games played by the Rheinmaidens whom the Nibelung Alberich robs of their gold, to this dwarf's unbridled lust for power and the scornful nihilism of the fire god Loge, to the father of the gods Wotan's attempt to create something that will last with his palace of Valhalla. And not lastly, the gold itself is a mute lead character: an item of gleaming fascination, it is simultaneously a touchstone by which each character is manifest and which divides gods and man alike into good and evil.

Der Ring des Nibelungen – Das Rheingold

Drawing loosely on motifs from Christianity, Buddhism, assorted legends and Schopenhauer’s philosophy, Richard Wagner eventually completed a myth of his own, PARSIFAL. The work that he dubbed a “stage-hallowing play” tells the story of a “pure fool” who is blissfully unaware of his own nature and calling. Parsifal sallies forth into the ascetic brotherhood of the Knights of the Grail and into another very different world, that of Klingsor’s erotically charged garden, where a kiss from Kundry infuses him with an enlightenment that leads him to release Amfortas, the King of the Grail, from his suffering and redeem the brotherhood.

Parsifal

In a courtyard of the Mycenaean palace servant girls speak disparagingly about Elektra. Elektra has not got over the murder of her father, Agamemnon, and the idea of revenge dominates her thoughts. Only one of the maidservants shows sympathy for her and is punished as a result. Elektra is yearning for the moment when vengeance will be hers and fully believes that it will come about by the actions of her brother, Orest, who was brought up in a distant region. Her sister, Chrysothemis, finds Elektra’s existence hard to bear and attempts to protect her from their mother, who has evil intentions. Chrysothemis wants to leave that awful place along with her sister so that they can live in freedom. Their mother Clytemnestra, who has been plagued by nightmares since she killed her husband, asks her daughter Elektra for help and while their conversation lasts it seems as if the two women might be reconciled. But Elektra’s hatred flares up again when Clytemnestra lies to her daughter over the whereabouts of her son, Orest. Elektra replies ambiguously to Clytemnestra’s question about the remedy for her anguish and fear, telling her mother that once the proper animal has been sacrificed under the axe her bad dreams will cease. Two strangers arrive and report the death of Orest. Elektra expresses her desire to ally with Chrysothemis in committing the deed, but her sister cannot contemplate such a thing. Determined to avenge herself, Elektra resolves: “Fine, then, I’ll do it alone!” One of the strangers moves closer to Elektra; shaken at the sight of her physical and emotional state, he allows her to see who he is: Orest. He exits to do the deed and presently Clytemnestra’s screams can be heard as she dies. Whereupon Elektra lures Aegisthus into the palace and he is killed by Orest as well. Agamemnon has been avenged. Nonetheless, Elektra stays in the palace feeling no sense of relief; she dances herself to death.

Elektra

The Flying Dutchman navigates the earth, accursed, tirelessly searching for salvation. But he can only find deliverance if he finds a woman who will promise to be faithful to him, even in death. Wagner’s atmospheric thriller encompasses the search for home and the desire for another.

The Flying Dutchman

Oper Leipzig

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

It’s the most performed opera in the German-speaking region, an unusual – and masterly – blend of Viennese folk theatre and fairy tale, mythology and freemasonry mystique: Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE remains a puzzle to this day. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder switch horses from the Queen of the Night to Sarastro half way through? Is the message not one of distrust towards a supposedly infallible priesthood and its simplistic good-versus-evil ideology? Are some Mozart experts right when they talk of a disconnect between text and music? Whatever the answer, it’s the music that allows us to relate to the story’s contradictions. Far from denouncing the characters, it confers an existentiality on their conflicts.

The Magic Flute

Rigoletto, the hated and feared courtyard jester at the court of Mantua, has tried everything to keep the existence of his beloved daughter secret from the womanising Duke and the cynical court society. But to no avail: Gilda has fallen in love with the Duke. So, at the beginning of the third act, Rigoletto sees only one way out: to confront his daughter with the Duke's erotic excesses. At the end of the third act, Rigoletto will have lost everything, and only the Duke's ‘La donna è mobile’ echoes through the night.

What's coming up? ... Rigoletto, Act 3

The Parisian demi-monde is celebrating wildly in the salons of the courtesan Violetta Valéry. Alfredo Germont enters the hall, and with him the love he celebrates in his famous drinking song. Violetta, who has never experienced such romantic, fiery affection, is torn between responding and fear. In this first act of Giuseppe Verdi's melodramma, the opera hits flow seamlessly into one another, from exuberant choruses to grand duets and finally the famous ‘È strano! è strano!’ sung by the title heroine.

What's coming up? ... La traviata, Act 1

In describing the attributes of his 1851 melodrama based on Victor Hugo’s acclaimed play “Le roi s’amuse” Verdi also puts his finger on the challenges that any director has to address: RIGOLETTO is namely a masterpiece whose particularity lies in the clash between the characters’ psychology and the improbable action of a fantasy storyline.

Rigoletto

“Amore, sommissione, dolcezza” – the traits that Giuseppe Verdi gave his eponymous heroine, Aida, who embodies pure love, tenderness and submissiveness. And these characteristics put her firmly in the tradition of 19th-century female protagonists who were not so much fully rounded personalities as sex objects and a focus for male fantasies, women whose inevitable fate was to die of a broken heart. And Aida is no different.

Aida

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

“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]

Prince Tamino is being pursued by a wild serpent. At the last minute, he is saved by three mysterious ladies who have been sent by the queen of the night. When the bird catcher Papageno appears and boasts about the heroic deed they punish him. In contrast, they give the prince a portrait of Pamina, the daughter of the queen who is being held captive by the ruler of the temple of the sun, Sarastro. Tamino falls in love with her. The queen appears in person and orders him to rescue Pamina together with Papageno. A magic flute will protect him from any danger whilst a reluctant Papageno is given magic bells. Guided by three young boys, they set off on their way to Sarastro’s temple. Whilst the temple guards tell Tamino that Sarastro is not the evil tyrant that the queen has depicted, Papageno finds Pamino and tries to flee with her. With the help of the chimes, he is able to distract her guard Monostatos although his efforts are scuppered by the appearance of Sarastro. Papageno, Pamina and Tamino have to stay in Sarastro’s kingdom as Sarastro has something greater planned for Tamino: just as he has taken Pamina into his kingdom to protect her from her mother, he plans to get Tamino into his circle of insiders of the sun temple and, in this way, prepare him for future tasks.

Die Zauberflöte / The Magic Flute

Semperoper Dresden

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

Repelled by the dispassion of the Wartburg society of minnesingers, Tannhäuser, a singer-knight, removes to the interior of the Venusberg in search of fulfilment. Eventually his longing for Elisabeth leads him to leave again. Back at the Wartburg castle, Tannhäuser takes part in a singing contest whose theme is the nature of love, but when he sings that love is ideally about sensual satisfaction, he is cast out and sent to Rome to seek papal absolution. He returns from Rome without the hoped-for indulgence and resolves to return to the Venusberg. Then a miracle occurs and he finds redemption after all.

Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg

Pedrillo, his lover Blonde and Konstanze, having been kidnapped by pirates and dragged into the seraglio by the Pasha, Bassa Selim, hope to be rescued. Konstanze’s fiancé Belmonte attempts to free them – but fails. Only the Pasha himself can grant them their freedom. Orientalism and Enlightenment meet colourful costumes and a fairytale backdrop in this production by the Dutch director and stage designer Michiel Dijkemas. In The Abduction from the Seraglio, which premiered in Vienna in 1782, Mozart gathered together numbers that are still some of the most famous in operatic literature such as Konstanze’s aria Martern aller Arten, Blonde’s Welche Wonne, welche Lust, Pedrillo’s Auf zum Kampfe or the exotic Chorus of the Janissaries.

Die Entführung aus dem Serail / The Abduction from the Seraglio

"The Magic Flute" is one of the most enigmatic masterpieces in the history of opera. Mozart's last opera transports the listener to a world of magic, trials, and mysterious symbols, telling a story of the search for inner strength, maturity, and the overcoming of fears. Between light and shadow, a universal interplay of human experiences unfolds – carried by Mozart's profound music and its compelling appeal to humanity. The new production is directed by Daniele Finzi Pasca from Ticino, whose poetic stage language uniquely blends theater, acrobatics, and circus. 

EPSG:4326

Opernhaus Zürich

With La forza del destino, Verdi broke new ground in the 1860s. The title itself refers to this paradigm shift, as it does not refer to the name of a character or a historical event, but rather evokes the universal concept of the «power of fate». Accordingly, the composer wrote a four-act opera that is a drama of ideas, dealing with the fate of entire social classes and peoples. Building on this, director Frank Castorf creates connections to the Spanish Civil War of the 20th century and the fight against fascism in the Second World War, weaving the individual fates of the characters with the horrors of colonial history. In this production by the veteran enfant terrible of the Berlin theatre scene, the «triangle of fate» is embodied this time by an internationally sought-after trio consisting of Guanqun Yu (Leonora) and the two house debutants Luciano Ganci (Don Alvaro) and Igor Golovatenko (Don Carlos). Massimo Zannetti, a frequent guest at the Berlin State Opera in the past, makes his debut at the Deutsche Oper with this revival.

La forza del destino

Sounds like those Richard Strauss unleashed in Elektra with a gigantic orchestra were unprecedented until the opera’s premiere in 1909. And the radicalism and expressive ferocity of Elektra have lost none of their power to this day. The archaic subject matter both terrifies and fascinates: Elektra, an infinitely lonely young woman, is kept alive solely by the thought of avenging her mother’s murder of her father, Agamemnon. When her father is avenged and her brother Orestes has killed their mother and her lover, Elektra dances an ecstatic dance, at the climax of which she collapses dead. This is a roller coaster of an opera. Ricarda Merbeth, one of the most important Wagner and Strauss interpreters of our time, takes on the title role, while the charismatic Okka von der Damerau makes her debut as Clytemnestra. The Slovak conductor Juraj Valčuha, for years one of the most influential guest conductors at Deutsche Oper Berlin, conducts the monumental work.

A digital labyrinth: Tens of thousands of digital posts are made around the world every second. Posts are put up, Tweets are written, videos are uploaded. Two thirds of the global population regularly uses social media, and almost half use them every day. A flow of information crashes against our brains, forcing us to make decisions on unrestricted paths through the ever-expanding digital jungle. We fluctuate between two extremes as this happens: touching animal videos alongside images of accidents, meal recipes and lifehacks followed by acts of violence. This heterogenous crossfire in the endless feed of content being permanently shoved into our faces forms a riptide that the recipient can scarcely escape. To counteract this powerlessness to an extent, Icelandic composer Bára Gísladóttir and French author and director Joris Lacoste search for meaning in this multidimensional chaos with Good Vibes Only. This is the first full-length stage work for the Siemens Music Foundation grant recipient, celebrated for her dark yet sensitive style that blends influences from noise, metal and classical tradition. Multi-talented artist Lacoste, who has garnered attention with his collage-like, documentary theater pieces, is making his operatic debut. In their collaborative creation, the two explore formal structures and human behaviour that emerge from the manifold interplay within the virtually limitless digital realm. The data world is reimagined as a stage. By rearranging real-world posts, a gigantic spectrum of cognitive and emotional expressions about our world is revealed. Good Vibes Only lets the audience experience the sheer breadth of notifications in the data flow of the digital ether in the form of trans-medial musical theatre. Titus Engel, conductor-in-residence and experienced partner for complex debuts, is conducting his first opera production at Deutsche Oper Berlin. In a highly technological spatial concept, diverse vocal styles combine with orchestral sounds and sophisticated electronics to create a panopticon of our digital age.

Good Vibes Only

A clown whose laughter catches in his throat, a ruthless lover, a hitman with a warm voice: In Rigoletto, Verdi assembles bawdy farce, profound character studies and overwhelming emotion into a dazzling grotesque about power and vulnerability. The opera is so much more than „La donna è mobile!” In his production, Jan Bosse tells the tragedy of a man who fails to separate his private life from his public actions. The Deutsche Oper Berlin auditorium becomes the decadent ducal court of Mantua, the understage a claustrophobic hiding place. There, Rigoletto keeps his daughter Gilda hidden from the eyes of the nobles. But as the action unfolds, the carefully separated roles of the cynical court jester and the gentle father begin to crumble. In his futile attempt to protect his daughter, Rigoletto inadvertently destroys his world – until only an empty stage remains. Conductor Anna Handler, already a favourite with the public, will conduct her first Verdi production.

E. T. A. Hoffmann called Don Giovanni «the opera of all operas.» The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard even included the piece in his major work, where the title character is described as „the incarnation of the genius of all that is sensual.” Don Giovanni is variously seen as an erotic womanizer or a ruthless lecher, as Dionysus incarnate or a contemptible sex offender. In Roland Schwab’s production, too, he appears fragmented. Driven by an insatiable desire for more, he staggers between revelry, orgies of violence and ascetic withdrawal. After great success with this production, Davide Luciano returns as Don Giovanni and Tommaso Barea as his cynical servant Leporello. Olga Peretyatko makes her debut at our theatre as Donna Elvira. Stefano Montanari will conduct this revival in his usual field, before presenting himself from a completely different perspective with the premiere of Otello.

Don Giovanni

Oscar Wilde’s drama about the biblical princess who has the prophet Jochanaan beheaded so she can kiss his dead mouth unfolds a tableau of human depravity: From murder and necrophilia to sexualised violence, one shocking moment follows another. But it was not only these themes that made Strauss’s Salome a scandal, but also its radically modern, overwhelming music, which was far ahead of its time. The «Faust» Prize winner Claus Guth incorporates insights from psychoanalysis, which emerged around the time of the 1905 premiere, into his production and delves into Salome’s subconscious: Younger versions of her Self accompany Salome like shadows of past wounds, together struggling to cope with childhood traumas. In a stage design that maintains the illusion of a flawless facade, reality, dream and memory begin to blur – the path from victim to perpetrator seems inevitable. Marc Albrecht conducts, and Elisabeth Strid will be performing Barrie Kosky’s new London Brünnhilde as Salome for the first time.

Bass

Tobias Kehrer

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 20, 2026 - Apr 23, 2027

The Magic Flute · Opernhaus Zürich

3 - 18 Oct, 2026

La forza del destino · Deutsche Oper Berlin

6 - 17 Nov, 2026

Elektra · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jan 22 - Feb 12, 2027

Good Vibes Only · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jan 29 - Feb 19, 2027

Rigoletto · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

23 - 29 May, 2026

Der Ring des Nibelungen – Siegfried · Deutsche Oper Berlin

17 - 27 May, 2026

Der Ring des Nibelungen – Die Walküre · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

Doktor Grenvil in La traviata by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Marquis of Calatrava in La forza del destino by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

2nd soldier in Salome by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Second Soldier in Salome by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Grech, ufficiale di Polizia in Fedora by Giordano

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Kammersänger in Intermezzo by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

hour in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Sarastro in The Magic Flute by Mozart

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Hans Schwarz in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Landgrave Hermann in Tannhäuser by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Sparafucile in Rigoletto by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Hunding in Die Walküre by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Daland in The Flying Dutchman by Wagner

Oper Leipzig

The King in Aida by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Titurel in Parsifal by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Osmin in Die Entführung aus dem Serail by Mozart

Semperoper Dresden

Orest in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Orestes in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Fafner in Das Rheingold by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Commendatore in Don Giovanni by Mozart

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Fafner in Siegfried by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Rocco in Fidelio by Beethoven

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Sarastro in The Magic Flute by Mozart

Opernhaus Zürich

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