A spectacular founding of a city: Benedikt von Peters’ spatial staging invites the audience to wander through the supposed paradise city of Mahagonny. Here, there is endless pleasure and everything is permitted, as long as you can pay – «but something is missing!». To escape the emptiness, the inhabitants eat and drink themselves to death, fuck and box their way to the grave. Only in Jim Mahoney does the idea of a more humane existence quietly take root.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Theater Basel

As one of the most exciting singers of our time, Nicole Chevalier has been working with Verdi's ‹La traviata› for over fourteen years. At that time still a member of the ensemble in Hanover, Chevalier is now a guest at all the leading houses in Europe: Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden London, Opera de Paris, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg Festival and many more.

La traviata

“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

Deutsche Oper Berlin

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.

This oratorio tells the story of the last days in the life of Jesus Christ. Exactly three hundred years ago, Johann Sebastian Bach set the Gospel text to music: The premiere was held on Good Friday in 1727. Benedikt von Peter’s production takes the inherent tradition of the Stations of the Cross seriously: Bach’s double-choir masterpiece unfolds as an acoustic crucifix; the audience sits amidst the musical action, exposing their own bodies to this Passion and its unsettling beauty. Betrayal, mortal agony, sacrifice and forgiveness do not appear as a distant event of salvation, but as a sober question for our present: What are the sins for which the Son must be sacrificed year after year? Not the Evangelist, but children bring the parable to life. They shoulder the cross, prevent Judas’s suicide with an embrace, and put the value system of a Christian society up for discussion. Marc Minkowski, a renowned specialist in Baroque vocal music and a guest at the Deutsche Oper for the first time, conducts this special revival exactly on the 300th anniversary of the work!

Benedikt von Peter

Events

Upcoming events

Mar 25 - Apr 4, 2027

St Matthew Passion · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Aug 22 - Sep 27, 2026

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny · Theater Basel

May 21 - Jun 20, 2026

La traviata · Theater Basel

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