Turandot refuses to marry by setting an impossible condition: Whoever wants her for his wife must solve three riddles. Anyone who can’t, is publicly executed. Prince Calaf, a refugee stranded in Peking, falls hopelessly under Turandot’s spell. The Princess is shaken to the core when he manages to answer all three. Turandot unleashes a clear struggle for power, which ultimately claims innocent victims.

EPSG:4326

Turandot

Oper Frankfurt

Otello, black, a stranger and yet having risen to the top of Venetian society through military merit and eloquence, marries the beautiful Desdemona. Naturally, this disturbs those around him. His closest confidant, Iago, instigates a jealous intrigue that leads to Otello killing first his bride and then himself. Arrigo Boito, Verdi's congenial librettist, places Jago's commitment to evil at the center as an equal element to virtue. With recourse to Otello's socially agreed otherness, Iago succeeds in bending the circumstances back into a supposed order by relegating Otello to the bottom of the racialized hierarchy. In collaboration with the renowned British video artist John Akomfrah, Silvia Costa scrutinises the underlying social constructions: Who actually defines from where what is foreign and what is their own, who is worthy and who is discarded?

Otello

Stuttgart Opera

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

Deutsche Oper Berlin

“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

Two of the world’s most powerful men shake hands – as the world looks on. With their opera about the state visit by US President Nixon to China in 1972 composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman rendered a recent historical event in operatic form. They envisioned a »heroic opera« telling of modern myths and the power of images. This rapprochement between the two great powers gave rise to one of the most prodigious media spectacles of the 20th century. Nixon himself put the event on a par with the moon landing. The opera, whose composition was pushed for by Peter Sellars, the director of the eventual premiere, is a depiction of both the details of the visit and the coverage by the media. Alice Goodman’s libretto reflects the tradition of 19th-century opera, with larger-than-life characters interacting and the protagonists dealing with both affairs of state and their private lives. Staged in the style of an excessively satirical documentary, the minimal-music opera sticks close to protocols from the state visit, depicting the larger-than-life protagonists swerving between exhibitionism, helplessness and the desire to reach a mutual understanding.

Nixon in China

The Chinese princess Turandot refuses marriage and demonstrates this with a gruesome ritual: Every suitor who fails to solve her three riddles is beheaded. This brutal cycle continues until Calaf breaks it. With his last, unfinished opera, Turandot, Giacomo Puccini created an unparalleled score that went beyond the famous «Nessun dorma.» To depict a fantastical, fairytale China, he blended traditional Chinese music, pentatonic scales, unusual timbres and stark dissonances into a soundscape that oscillates between lyrical delicacy and brutal force. Franco Alfano completed the opera and wrote an unusually conciliatory ending for Puccini, which is countered in this production by Lorenzo Fioroni: In a timeless state reminiscent of contemporary military dictatorships, brutality and trauma remain omnipresent. Camilla Nylund, known for her incomparable Wagner and Strauss portraits, can be seen here in the challenging title role in the Italian repertoire.

Alfred Kim

Events

Upcoming events

Apr 12 - Jun 4, 2026

Turandot · Oper Frankfurt

1 - 11 May, 2027

Turandot · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Apr 12 - Jun 4, 2026

Turandot · Oper Frankfurt

Oct 11 - Nov 19, 2025

Otello · Staatsoper Stuttgart

Future and recently performed repertoire

Calaf in Turandot by Puccini

Oper Frankfurt

Otello in Otello by Verdi

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Mao Tse-tung in Nixon in China by Adams

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Radames in Aida by Verdi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

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