Singer

Johann Sebastian Bach St. John Passion BWV 245 (excerpts)
in conjunction with improvisations on ancient oriental instruments and other pieces

Inspired by a concept by conductor Ivan Fischer, we bring musical worlds together: excerpts from Bach's St. John Passion enter into a dialogue with rousing improvisations on Middle Eastern instruments, presenting both musical traditions in a new and multifaceted way. In addition to top-class vocal soloists, we welcome two cross-border artists from East and West: Israeli percussionist Zohar Fresco is a master of the frame drum Tof Miriam, and his musical partner Taiseer Elias is a virtuoso on the Arabic lute, the oud.

EPSG:4326

1. Concert Late Night at the Kokerei Hansa: Bach Remix

Kokerei Hansa

The re-enactment of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ at Easter has always been an occasion for a special musical arrangement. In Leipzig, too, Johann Sebastian Bach, who as the newly appointed "Director of Music" was officially responsible for the music in the city's churches, was expected to come up with something for this purpose. Bach fulfilled this task at his very first Easter in his new position: with the performance of his setting of the Passion story based on the words of the Gospel of John on Good Friday of 1724.

2nd Philharmonic Concert

Konzerthaus Dortmund

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

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Fleeing from a snake, Prince Tamino enters the realm of the Queen of the night. Three ladies rescue him and are fascinated by him. As the bird catcher Papageno claims to have defeated the serpent, they punish his boasting and put a lock on his mouth. Tamino receives a picture of Pamina, the abducted daughter of the Queen, immediately falls in love with her and vows to rescue her. With a magic flute and a set of bells, Tamino and Papageno set off and face all dangers.

The Magic Flute

Cologne Opera

RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY in Benedikt von Peter's production will take place in the foyers and on the stage - guests can move freely between the venues and video screens. There will be free choice of seating, including on mattresses.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

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]

Rigoletto

"Rejoice, be glad!" sings the choir at the beginning, and for many, this heralds the start of Advent every year. With rousing choirs, atmospheric solos and contemplative chorales, Bach's Christmas Oratorio finds a tone and gesture that delights audiences and singers alike and has made the work a favorite at Christmas time. A star cast of soloists, the WDR Radio Choir, the WDR Symphony Orchestra and the charismatic conductor Simon Halsey allow the great music to unfold its full radiance and together tell a timeless story of peace on earth.

Bach: Weihnachtsoratorium

Museum Ludwig

"Rejoice, be glad!" sings the choir at the beginning, ushering in the Advent season for many every year. With rousing choirs, atmospheric solos and contemplative chorales, Bach's Christmas Oratorio finds a tone and gesture that delights audiences and singers alike and has made the work a favorite piece during the Christmas season. A star cast of soloists, the WDR Radio Choir, the WDR Symphony Orchestra and the charismatic conductor Simon Halsey allow the great music to unfold its full radiance and together tell a timeless story of peace on earth.

Bach: Christmas Oratorio

Cologne Philharmonie

Bach mal anders: Christmas Escape Room

Rejoice, be glad! Bach's Christmas Oratorio is as much a part of the holidays as mulled wine and the Advent wreath. In this concert, however, the audience must actively help to experience the popular and famous Christmas music: the appropriate music will only be heard if the puzzles of the exclusive Bach Escape Room game are solved.

Bach with a twist: Christmas Escape Room | WDR@Philharmonie

Betrayal, lost honour, crime and atonement, passionate love, a yearning for death and forgetting… The tale of Tristan and Isolde grew from a Celtic legend into today’s work of mythical stature. It inspired Richard Wagner to his “opus metaphysicum” [Friedrich Nietzsche].

Tristan and Isolde

In their second collaboration after LE NOZZE DI FIGARO Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte drew on the Spanish legend of Don Juan. Earlier popularity aside, the protagonist only attained the mythical dimensions of a heroic archetype in Mozart’s operatic version, which went on to inspire countless reimaginings of the material and philosophical readings by E. T. A. Hoffmann, Søren Kierkegaard et al. A raft of musical pieces from DON GIOVANNI, ranging from arias and the famous overture to duets, trios and ensembles, have seared themselves into our collective awareness.

Don Giovanni

Georges Bizet’s titular heroine is as captivating a character as any in the history of opera. The different interpretations of Carmen are legion: we have the seductress, the personification of forbidden yearning, the standard bearer for the “eternally female” in the brutal battle of the sexes, the anarchist unfettered by bourgeois angst and compulsions, the archaic clairvoyante seeing her own death in the cards - yet free, as she does not dread her destiny. Few opera heroines are so open to interpretation and hence so able to serve as a mirror held up to society.

Carmen

After a day full of opera, backstage experiences, children's programmes, stage shows and more, arias and ensembles from premieres and revivals will be performed. You can look forward to our orchestra, the chorus, and many soloists who will get you in the mood for an exciting and musical season 24/25.

Season Opening Concert 24/25

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

The Dutchman is a cursed man, an outsider, a driven individual. Richard Wagner came upon the character of the famous drifter via Heinrich Heine, who lent the Romantic material his typically ironic touch. Wagner’s interest was tweaked not by Heine’s packaging of the story, which relegated the Dutchman-based action to the margins, but by the tale of the enigmatic mariner, which led to him writing his first opera about the man’s quest for a woman who could offer him redemption. The Dutchman, restlessly plying the borderlands between life and death, encounters Senta, who appears equally ill-at-ease and rootless and yearns for a masculine character, the Dutchman, a figment of her imagination.

Der fliegende Holländer

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists perform Bach’s masterpiece with Olivier Award winner Peter Whelan.

The crowning glory of Bach's first Leipzig cantata cycle, his revolutionary St John Passion changed the course of liturgical music history, stamping his interpretation of the gospel in his largest-scale work to date.

The Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque Soloists have shaped modern audiences' understanding of this music for over 60 years with vivid and compelling performances. Baroque specialist Peter Whelan returns to direct the ensembles, after a critically-acclaimed debut with them in 2024.

Bach: St John Passion

Palau de la Música Catalana

Müpa Budapest

St Martin-in-the-Fields

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

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

Few works have slipped from the programmes of German-language opera houses to the extent experienced by the operas of Albert Lortzing. Where works such as THE POACHER, THE ARMOURER and UNDINE were still fixtures in the repertoire only thirty years ago, they have now all but vanished from the calendars of theatre venues. Not even Lortzing’s greatest triumph, his comedy of errors CSAR AND CARPENTER (1837), has escaped the neglect – and this despite old chestnuts like the “Clog Dance” and the aria “Lebe wohl, mein flandrisch Mädchen.” Doubly surprising if you consider that this tale of Tsar Peter the Great, who strikes up a friendship with an army deserter with the exact same name while acquiring the skills of a carpenter incognito in a Dutch shipyard, was arguably one of the best musical comedies of its time, with Lortzing’s protagonists retaining all their relatable flaws and yearnings in the face of all their ups and downs. The young deserter, who just wants a quiet life, the feisty Marie, who’s determined to decide her own path, the Tsar with his thinly veiled leanings to violent domination, and van Bett as the mayor and a loveable caricature of a German bigwig… all these characters confer a timeless humanity on the comedy.

Tenor

Kieran Carrel

Events

Upcoming events

Dec 22, 2025 - Mar 27, 2026

The Barber of Seville · Deutsche Oper Berlin

18 - 28 Jan, 2026

Der fliegende Holländer · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Mar 6 - Apr 3, 2026

Bach: St John Passion · English Baroque Soloists

May 2 - Jun 6, 2026

A Midsummer Night’s Dream · Deutsche Oper Berlin

16 - 26 May, 2026

Der Ring des Nibelungen – Das Rheingold · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Nov 1, 2025

1. Concert Late Night at the Kokerei Hansa: Bach Remix · Dortmunder Philharmoniker

28 - 29 Oct, 2025

2nd Philharmonic Concert · Dortmunder Philharmoniker

Future and recently performed repertoire

Narraboth in Salome by Strauss

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Singer in Christmas Oratorio by Bach

WDR Sinfonieorchester

Jack O'Brian in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny by Weill

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Tamino in The Magic Flute by Mozart

Oper Köln

Seaman in Tristan and Isolde by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Remendado in Carmen by Bizet

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Walther in Tannhäuser by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Matthew Stock Exchange in Rigoletto by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville by Rossini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Erik in Der fliegende Holländer by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Froh in Das Rheingold by Wagner

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni by Mozart

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Lysander in A Midsummer Night's Dream by Britten

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Singer in St John Passion by Bach

English Baroque Soloists

Marquis de Chateauneuf in The Czar and the Carpenter by Lortzing

Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

Kieran Carrel hasn't added a bio