It is a game of life and death initiated by the elusive Princess Turandot: each suitor for her hand must solve three riddles. Failure means execution. And so far, no prince has been able to win the great prize. But then a stranger arrives in the kingdom of Turandot, Prince Calaf, who is determined to take on the challenge. When he solves the riddles and claims the princess in marriage as agreed, he encounters a frightened woman who refuses to wed the stranger – and now the princess becomes the tortured one, for she must find out the prince’s name in order to keep her freedom. Unfinished at his death, Giacomo Puccini’s final opera was premiered as a fragment in 1926. This is a multi-layered masterpiece of great emotional intensity, musical brilliance and unique in its use of exotic Chinese melody. French stage director Marie-Eve Signeyrole makes her Semperoper debut with this operatic thriller.

Turandot

Semperoper Dresden

Sandra presents the results of her research on the melting polar ice caps in the form of stand-up comedy and hopes in this way to sensitize people to the alarming situation of our planet. While on the one hand applauded for her efforts, she is also constantly confronted with skeptical questions. Her warnings go unheard even in her own family, as is true of the mythical figure Cassandra who predicts the destruction of Troy in flames. The God Apollo grants her visionary powers, but because she refuses to give into his attempts to seduce her, he ensures that no one believes her prophecies.

Cassandra

Bebelplatz

Berlin State Opera

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.

Yashi

Events

Past events

16 - 29 Nov, 2025

Turandot · Semperoper Dresden

7 - 22 Jun, 2025

Turandot · Semperoper Dresden

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