Actor

It’s a rambunctious tale: an old curmudgeon is set on marrying his own ward of court with a view to snapping up her considerable inheritance. He leaves no stone unturned in his efforts to keep the fair Rosina cloistered from the outside world and thus from any potential young suitors. A pity, then, that Count Almaviva has fallen head over heels for her. Assisted by Figaro, an enterprising barber, he plans to outwit the old man, win over Rosina – and ensure that it’s love that attracts her to him rather than his rank and wealth. Not an easy job for Figaro, seeing as the opposite camp is scheming with equal tenacity … Love wins out in the end, and it turns out that all precautions were useless!

The Barber of Seville

Deutsche Oper Berlin

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

Figaro and Susanna, servants at the court of Count Almaviva, are soon to marry and are furnishing the lodgings that they’ve been allotted in the Count’s castle. Figaro is gleefully taking measurements for the conjugal bed, but Susanna is worried: the Count’s passion for his wife has long since cooled, meaning that he might invoke his “right to the first night”. Figaro is determined that it won’t come to that, but another issue is plaguing him too: before lending him a sum of money, Marcellina, the Count’s housekeeper had wrung from him a pledge to marry her if he defaulted, and that time has now come. To complicate matters, in the Countess’s chambers Susanna is asked by the Count’s page, Cherubino, to put in a word for him because he’s been fired for a dalliance with Barbarina, the Count’s gardener’s daughter. The Count enters suddenly and tries to negotiate a tryst with Susanna, forcing Cherubino to hide, whereupon Basilio the music teacher arrives, and finally Figaro. The situation heats up and the only person to keep a handle on things is Susanna.

Le nozze di Figaro

He was touted as the new star in Italy’s operatic firmament around 1910. Publisher Tito Ricordi had big plans for the young Riccardo Zandonai and was sparing no cost to achieve the same triumphs with him as Giulio Ricordi had done a generation earlier with the young Puccini. For a huge fee, Ricordi secured the rights to a scandalous contemporary play - Gabriele D’Annunzio’s 5-act drama “Francesca da Rimini” – which had created a stir with its bloody civil-war scenes, cruel passions and adulterous couple. D’Annunzio’s fin-de-siècle-esque “poem of blood and lust” was all the rage in artist circles. The 31-year-old Riccardo Zandonai spied his chance to pen a florid opera of grandiose scale in a musical language fusing a raft of styles and epochs. And sure enough, Zandonai ploughs his individual European furrow of musical theatre, encompassing Italian bel canto, hints of Renaissance madrigals, gritty verismo, pre-Fascist marches, Wagner’s TRISTAN as a point of reference and a French Impressionism à la Debussy.

Francesca da Rimini

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

King Henry I, “the Fowler”, is in Brabant to hold the Assizes and assert the nobles’ duty to provide militias to assist in military campaigns. Since the death of the Duke of Brabant, however, the succession has been a source of conflict. His children, Gottfried and Elsa, are wards of Count Telramund, but Gottfried has vanished and Telramund suspects Elsa of having killed him. A duel between her accuser and Elsa’s champion is organised to decide the issue. At the last moment a knight appears in a boat drawn by a swan, ready to defend Elsa’s honour. He is also prepared to take her as his wife on condition that she never ask him his name or where he hails from. Elsa agrees and the knight defeats Telramund.

Lohengrin

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

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.

La bohème

MACBETH was the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be set to music by Verdi, in 1847. Despite his decades of interest in the English playwright, he did not adapt another work of Shakespeare’s until late in his career. Verdi’s operatic rendition of this tale of murky prophecies and bloody struggles for the throne of Scotland came in the hugely productive decade that Verdi himself came to refer to as his »galley slave years«. Still striving for critical recognition, he turned out a string of operas that expanded on the bel canto genre. MACBETH was part of an evolution in Italian opera, a development that was even more evident in the modified version released in 1865. In typical fashion Verdi roughened up the storyline and injected some emotional twists and turns, intensifying the drama in the process and creating a tense momentum that sends the protagonists hurtling towards their respective gruesome ends.

Macbeth

Enrico wants his sister to marry Lord Arturo Bucklaw, a match that will save his family from bankruptcy, but Lucia has committed to Edgardo Ravenswood, Enrico’s nemesis, who is asserting his right to family land that is now formally owned by Enrico. A forged letter framing Edgardo as having been unfaithful and blaming Lucia for the predicament the family is in enables Enrico to persuade Lucia to marry Lord Bucklaw. Edgardo throws down the gauntlet to Enrico. Lucia goes insane and dies. Edgardo, grief-stricken at the sound of the death knell, stabs himself to death.

Lucia di Lammermoor

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

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

Lucia di Lammermoor reigns as the crown jewel of bel canto opera! Set amid the foggy moors and ancient castles of Scotland, Donizetti’s masterpiece tells the tragic story of Lucia, whose forbidden love for her family’s sworn enemy drives her to the brink of madness. When her brother forces her into a loveless marriage, Lucia’s heart—and mind—shatter in one of opera’s most unforgettable scenes. Renowned for its breathtaking drama and virtuosic singing, Lucia di Lammermoor remains one of the most celebrated works in the operatic canon, a timeless showcase of the full power and passion of the human voice. 

EPSG:4326

Berkshire Opera Festival: Lucia di Lammermoor

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

Lucia di Lammermoor reigns as the crown jewel of bel canto opera! Set amid the foggy moors and ancient castles of Scotland, Donizetti’s masterpiece tells the tragic story of Lucia, whose forbidden love for her family’s sworn enemy drives her to the brink of madness. When her brother forces her into a loveless marriage, Lucia’s heart—and mind—shatter in one of opera’s most unforgettable scenes.  Renowned for its breathtaking drama and virtuosic singing, Lucia di Lammermoor remains one of the most celebrated works in the operatic canon, a timeless showcase of the full power and passion of the human voice.

Actor

Dean Murphy

Events

Upcoming events

5 - 17 Apr, 2026

Suor Angelica / Gianni Schicchi · Deutsche Oper Berlin

May 2 - Jun 6, 2026

A Midsummer Night’s Dream · Deutsche Oper Berlin

22 - 28 Aug, 2026

Berkshire Opera Festival: Lucia di Lammermoor · Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

22 - 28 Aug, 2026

Lucia Di Lammermoor · Berkshire Opera Festival

Past events

Dec 22, 2025 - Mar 27, 2026

The Barber of Seville · Deutsche Oper Berlin

8 - 18 Dec, 2025

Andrea Chenier · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

Marquis D'Obigny in La traviata by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Marco in Gianni Schicchi by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Macbeth's servant / A Messenger in Macbeth by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Enrico in Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Matthieu in Andrea Chénier by Giordano

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Schmidt in Andrea Chénier by Giordano

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Marcello in La bohème by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

King's Herald in Lohengrin by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Figaro in The Barber of Seville by Rossini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Albert in Werther by Massenet

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Demetrius in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Britten

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Enrico in Lucia di lammermoor by Donizetti

Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

Duke Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Prince Jeletzki in The Queen of Spades by Tchaikovsky

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Il Giullare in Francesca da Rimini by Zandonai

Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

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