Singer

The line from Mozart to Debussy and Ravel is usually straighter than that to their German-speaking contemporaries. For all three share a playful quality – a delight in sound that delights the ear and yet never remains superficial. But when things get serious, Mozart transcends the player and shows in his great church works that beauty and reverence are not mutually exclusive. His Great Mass in C minor is one of those masterpieces that has something tragic and, at the same time, stately about it.

Debussy

Tonhalle Düsseldorf

In order to foil Alberich’s bid for power, the ruler of the gods Wotan has fathered nine Valkyries, who have the task of gathering an army of fallen heroes for him and bringing them to Valhalla. His intention is that his son Siegmund, conceived from a relationship with a mortal woman, will be the free-born hero who wins back the ring for him. However, Siegmund unwittingly upsets Wotan’s plan by falling in love with his twin sister Sieglinde, a union that gives birth to Siegfried. When Wotan’s favourite daughter Brünnhilde disobeys her father’s order to seal Siegmund’s downfall out of compassion, he banishes her to the rock of fire from which only the strongest hero will be able to rescue her. This will be Siegfried.

The Valkyrie

Theater Duisburg

The Queen of the Night asks Tamino to free Pamina from the clutches of the supposed villain Sarastro. And so, together with the bird catcher Papageno, he sets out to become a hero. But there are many surprises awaiting him on his adventurous rescue mission... Barrie Kosky's multimedia staging, which the director developed together with the British artists' collective “1927”, has long enjoyed cult status around the world. The imaginative interplay of scene, music and video animation elegantly transposes Mozart's opera into the present day.

The Magic Flute

German Oper am Rhein

Of course, it's much more fun to play than to help with housework! Hänsel and Gretel know that too. It's just a shame that they smash the milk churn during their boisterous games and ruin their dinner. What should the poor family put on the table now? The mother scolds her children and sends them into the forest to look for berries. However, what begins as an adventure soon turns serious at dusk: the siblings get lost and soon fall into the clutches of the wicked witch. Now they have to summon up all their courage and ingenuity to free themselves.

Hansel and Gretel

Giulio Cesare has defeated his enemy Pompeo and chased him all the way to Egypt. Against Caesare's will, however, Pompeo was then executed by the Egyptian king Tolomeo. The wife and son of the slain man swear to avenge him. Cleopatra, meanwhile, wants the Egyptian throne all to herself. In order to get it, she must get rid of her brother Tolomeo and win Cesare's support. She seduces him, he falls for her - and makes Cleopatra Queen of Egypt.

Julius Caesar in Egypt

Two peoples find themselves in the barbaric grip of war after Nabucco and his troops attack Jerusalem. The Babylonian ruler and Zaccaria, the leader of the Hebrews, do not budge an inch from their opposing viewpoints in this profound conflict, while the daily grind of war continues to bring new suffering to both peoples. The seemingly hopeless conflict does not even stop at their own families: Zaccaria holds Nabucco's favorite daughter Fenena hostage, while she has long since changed sides out of love for Ismaele and lives among the enemy people. Nabucco's other daughter, Abigaille, envies her sister's happiness and her father's throne and forges disastrous plans...

Nabucco

The mermaid Rusalka loves the prince - a human! She wants to risk everything, the loss of her family and her home, to become a human woman. Transformed by the witch Ježibaba, she must face the prince in silence, telling him of her love only through her looks and gestures. If the prince does not fall in love with her, he must die and she must live as an outcast from then on. Rusalka's appearance initially beguiles the prince, but the magical, voiceless creature remains a foreign body in the human world, and eventually her lover turns his back on her...

Rusalka

Last season, the Chinese-born New Zealand conductor Tianyi Lu made her debut in Duisburg and caused a huge sensation with a passionate performance. Now she is returning to the orchestra - with one of the most mysterious works in music history: the Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. There are countless legends about this requiem, which the composer was unable to complete himself. He died while working on it and left behind fragments for posterity that led to all kinds of speculation. Because most of the movements of the Requiem hardly progressed beyond sketches, the mythical history of composition is followed by an equally adventurous series of attempts to complete the torso to form a "complete" work. Tianyi Lu has opted for the established version by Franz Xaver Süßmayr, to whom Mozart himself says he personally gave instructions for the elaboration. But regardless of the question of how much “real” Mozart is in the Requiem, it is a masterful work – with the spectacular use of the trombones in the “Dies irae” and the powerful use of the choir. Here it is brilliantly sung by the Duisburg Philharmonic Choir, with whom the orchestra traditionally maintains a close working relationship.

Mozart Requiem

Philharmonie Mercatorhalle

In 1900, three keepers disappear without a trace from a remote lighthouse in the north of Scotland. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies based his chamber opera "The Lighthouse" (1980) on this unresolved incident, which retraces the events in a mixture of documentation and vision of what actually happened at the time. Maxwell Davies' composition ranges from the roaring waves surrounding the lighthouse to the chant-like arguments between the three keepers Sandy, Blazes and Arthur that lead to the catastrophe.

Mezzo-soprano

Anna Harvey

Events

Past events

20 - 23 Mar, 2026

Debussy · Düsseldorfer Symphoniker

Feb 22 - Apr 5, 2026

The Valkyrie · Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Future and recently performed repertoire

2nd Queen in The Magic Flute by Mozart

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Hansel in Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Dido in Dido and Aeneas by Purcell

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Fenena in Nabucco by Verdi

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Fricka in The Valkyrie by Wagner

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Caesar in Julius Caesar in Egypt by Händel

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

About

Anna Harvey hasn't added a bio