No other work reflects Puccini's search for new forms of musical theatre like his three-act trilogy IL TRITTICO, which premiered in 1918. In three pieces with different colours and temperatures, he once again brought to the stage what Italian opera could be in those years. In a condensed version, the second and third parts of the triptych now return to the stage of the Deutsche Oper in Karabulut's colourful production: SUOR ANGELICA, a piece with an all-female cast, is unique in opera history and revolves around questions of life and death and the possibilities in between. In her feminist interpretation, Karabulut explores the possibilities of (female) self-determination within a closed system. GIANNI SCHICCHI, on the other hand, follows the tradition of commedia dell'arte, placing humans at the centre as players and greedy deceivers. With her keen sense of timing and a captivating ensemble, Karabulut reveals the bizarre depths of a hypocritical family gathering once again around the deathbed of their patriarch.

Suor Angelica / Gianni Schicchi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

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

A nation is cowed by its princess. Turandot, beautiful and fascinating representative of a royal dynasty, presides over a gruesome ritual: only her marriage to a suitor will bring an end to the violence, but no would-be bridegroom has yet managed to solve the riddles. The same old spectacle plays out, ending in yet another execution, until Calaf, the son of a deposed ruler from a foreign land, unexpectedly answers the riddles correctly. He then turns the tables on Turandot, forcing her to answer his own question if she wants to steal out of her obligation. Puccini’s times are changing rapidly, the art world is going through drastic transformation and new, abstract forms are being coined to reflect modern-day experience. And the composer, in his early 60s, is again trying to break new ground.

Turandot

Violetta Valery, living in kept splendour at the expense of Baron Douphol, has apparently recovered from a serious illness. To celebrate, she throws a party where she meets and falls for Alfredo Germont. As their love for each other is frowned upon, they set up house outside of Paris. Alfredo’s father insists that she break with his son in order not to jeopardise the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister. Violetta accedes to his wish and cuts off relations. In a showdown at another party Violetta tries to convince Alfredo that she’s in love with the Baron, causing Alfredo to hurl his gambling winnings at her feet, calling them “fees for services rendered”. Soon afterwards, at the height of the Paris carnival, Violetta is on her deathbed. She receives Alfredo, who has heard from his father her real reason for leaving him. Violetta forgives him, gives him her blessing and dies.

La traviata

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

The Republic of Genoa is split into two camps headed by their respective arch rivals, Simon Boccanegra and Fiesco, who have been at loggerheads for decades. Yet the two men are connected by a long-dead woman – Fiesco’s daughter, the lover of Simon – who bore Simon a daughter named Amelia, who in turn vanished into care as an infant. When Amelia reappears 25 years later, she becomes a pawn in a power struggle that eventually claims Simon. The original version of SIMON BOCCANEGRA, which premiered in 1857, is one of Verdi’s explorations into the dichotomy between public actions and private urges. Here, the stark differences between the two old men, Simon and Fiesco, set the stage for suspicion, conspiracy and assassination – with little prospect of a happy end. And not even the victory of one side can guarantee a lasting peace.

Simon Boccanegra

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

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

Calaf has solved Princess Turandot's riddles. But Turandot categorically refuses to marry the stranger, so Calaf offers her a way out. If she knows his name by the next day, he will kill himself and she will remain unmarried. And so an entire country sets out in search of this one name, and no one is allowed to sleep that night: ‘Nessun dorma’. In this act, you will experience how love can still blossom from this situation.

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

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

One of the astonishing facts of music history is that almost all of the great operas based on Goethe were written in France. Alongside Gounod's and Berlioz's Faust settings and Ambroise Thomas's MIGNON, Jules Massenet's WERTHER is the most prominent example in this series. Premiered in Vienna in 1892, the work is also one of Massenet's most successful operas and, in its expressive immediacy, a pinnacle of the "drame lyrique".

Werther (concert version)

Strobe lighting is used during the performance. At the end of the performance, a shot with a blank cartridge sounds on stage.

Queen of Spades

It is the summer of 1789. A festivity is being prepared in the castle of Countess de Coigny. Charles Gérard, a servant of the Countess´ voices his hatred of the French aristrocracy´s decadence. His aged Father is forced to labour all day long and Gérard himself leads the undignified life of a lackey. Moreover, he is secretly and unhappily in love with Madeleine de Coigny, the daughter of the House with whom he was raised. The political situation is very tense. When the visitors attending the ball finally arrive, they try to distract themselves from the disquieting news from Paris with the help of arcadian idylls and games. The young poet André Chénier is among the guests. Madeleine requests him to recite a poem. He sings of love and laments the injustice of the powers that be in such a convincing manner that Madeleine is deeply moved and forced to quit the room. The doors are suddely opened and a mob of irate people led by Gérard shocks the ball guests. However, the Countess manages to pacify and disperse the mob. The dancing continues.

Andrea Chenier

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

A motley group of travellers on their way to Reims for the coronation of Charles X is billeted in the Hotel zur Goldenen Lilie. But when it transpires that no fresh horses are available for the stage coach, they realise they’re stranded.

The journey to Reims

«What is our life? A game! Good and evil are merely dreams, work and honesty just lies,» Hermann fatalistically concludes in Pique Dame, as he faces his end at the gaming table. Based on Pushkin’s novella, Tchaikovsky paints a picture of a world dominated by economic inequality and the law that dictates only the strongest survive. Hermann must live up to the social standing of his lover Lisa at any cost; he hopes to gain wealth through the Countess’s cursed card secret. But his hope for happiness vanishes in a spiral of obsession that drags Hermann into the abyss. Doris Soffel returns as the Countess in Sam Brown’s production. Elena Guseva takes on the role of Lisa, while Arsen Soghomonyan makes his house debut as Hermann; both have performed the roles on stages from Milan to New York. Stéphane Degout and Alexey Markov, two great baritones of our time, appear as Prince Yeletsky and Count Tomsky, respectively. The musical direction is by the Ukrainian conductor Kirill Karabits.

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.

Isolation and loneliness have become part of our collective experience, especially since the coronavirus pandemic. Violetta, the young courtesan, suffers them on her deathbed, forced by societal demand to reject her lover. Verdi’s only opera set in the bourgeois world of his time demonstrates the hypocrisy of a society that first fawns over a young woman and then abandons her. Götz Friedrich’s production amplifies the emotional impact of Verdi’s music by telling Violetta’s story as a flashback: The premonition of death is present from the beginning, hanging like a shadow over the Parisian party. Thus, a timeless drama with a requiem-like quality unfolds. We eagerly anticipate the Violetta debut of Federica Lombardi, a favourite with audiences at Deutsche Oper Berlin. She will later be succeeded by Martina Russomanno, new in our ensemble. Michele Spotti, the new Principal Guest Conductor, promises a sophisticated musical interpretation.

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.

Michael Bachtadze

Events

Upcoming events

Feb 11 - Jun 23, 2026

Turandot · Deutsche Oper Berlin

1 - 13 Nov, 2026

Queen of Spades · Deutsche Oper Berlin

6 - 17 Nov, 2026

Elektra · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Dec 26, 2026 - Jun 20, 2027

La traviata · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jan 29 - Feb 19, 2027

Rigoletto · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

5 - 17 Apr, 2026

Suor Angelica / Gianni Schicchi · Deutsche Oper Berlin

21 - 27 Feb, 2026

Elektra · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

Baron Douphol in La traviata by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Ping in Turandot by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Betto di Signa in Gianni Schicchi by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Lorek, chirurgo in Fedora by Giordano

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Paolo Albiani in Simon Boccanegra by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

An old servant in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Matthew in Andrea Chénier by Giordano

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Hermann Ortel in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Baron Douphol in La traviata by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Biterolf in Tannhäuser by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Count of Ceprano in Rigoletto by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The count of Monterone in Rigoletto by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Amonasro in Aida by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The Bailiff in Werther by Massenet

Deutsche Oper Berlin

An old Servant in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Ein alter Diener in Elektra by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Lord Sidney in Il viaggio a Reims by Rossini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Narumow in The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Amonasro in Aida by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

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