Umberto Giordano’s FEDORA swings between whodunnit and the world of political intrigue, at once a tragic love story and a riveting psychogram. The opera was based on the play of the same name by Victorien Sardou, a French playwright who had already provided the source material for Puccini’s TOSCA. The triumphant world premiere of FEDORA in 1898 at the Tetro Lirico in Milan went down in history for featuring the break-out performance of the legendary tenor Enrico Caruso, who established its best-known aria, “Amor ti vieta”, in the collective memory of the world’s operagoers. That first production went on to huge international acclaim, touring Vienna, Paris, Hamburg and the New York MET. Giordano’s best received work after ANDREA CHÉNIER, FEDORA continues to thrill audiences with its musical richness and iconic melodies as it goes about depicting a fin-de-siécle elite whose private issues become entangled with political wheeling and dealing.

Fedora

Deutsche Oper Berlin

As in all operas by Puccini, TOSCA is an illustration of how human attentiveness and pleasures of the palate can be mutually dependent if the composer’s artistic intentions become a benchmark for directorial interpretation. Puccini’s humane attentiveness is essentially dependent on an outcry and/or a sense of resignation. The pity inherent in his music does not content itself with abstract gestures; it wants to unsettle, to bring about change. Out of the “small things” named by Puccini as the source of his inspiration and the focus of his music “big things” grow – as long as we want them. Puccini’s choice of material owes something, directly or indirectly, to the spirit of Zola, Gorki and Hauptmann, and the link between that material and his compositional style places him likewise as a direct descendant of Verdi and an exponent of verismo. He was also known as an admirer of Wagner, although a Wagner imitator he assuredly was not.

Tosca

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

The tragic opera in three acts by Francis Poulenc, premiered in 1957 at La Scala in Milan, is one of the most important works of musical theater of the 20th century. Based on the true story of the Carmelites of Compiègne, "Dialogues des Carmélites" tells of social abysses and the importance of the basic values ​​of democratic coexistence - and culminates in a finale that is musically one of the most emotional that opera has to offer.

Dialogues des Carmélites

Staatstheater Braunschweig

"At the White Horse Inn on Lake Wolfgangsee, happiness is at your doorstep" - in the popular inn, all kinds of different characters meet each other, all looking for happiness (in love): waiter Leopold loves his boss, the landlady of the "Rössl", Josepha Vogelhuber, but is constantly rejected because Josepha is interested in her regular guest Dr. Siedler. But he has his eye on the factory owner's daughter Ottilie, who in turn is to marry Sigismund, the son of her father's greatest competitor. Sigismund, however... in short: Lake Wolfgangsee is not just an Alpine Salzkammergut idyll, but also a tangle of love and competition. And then the emperor comes.

Im weissen Rössl

There is joy in Messina, Sicily: the people are celebrating the victorious return of the army from a battle and an important wedding is imminent. Héro, the governor's daughter, is looking forward to her upcoming marriage to Claudio, the general's right-hand man, with such anticipation that she sheds tears of joy. And while her cousin Béatrice and Claudio's friend Bénédict otherwise seem to be bound by deep anticipation and fully occupied with biting, mocking arguments, they are in complete agreement on one point: if this is the happiness in love that everyone else is always raving about, then they would rather remain single. However, the two squabblers have not reckoned with their fellow men, who are initiating a well-meaning conspiracy with the aim of bringing the declared marriage refusers together happily after all...

Matthew Peña

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 25, 2025 - Jun 12, 2026

Carmen · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Nov 5, 2025 - Apr 23, 2026

Tosca · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Nov 27 - Dec 10, 2025

Fedora · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Nov 27 - Dec 10, 2025

Fedora · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Nov 5, 2025 - Apr 23, 2026

Tosca · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Future and recently performed repertoire

The Chevalier, his son in Dialogues of the Carmelites by Poulenc

Staatstheater Braunschweig

Desiré, cameriere in Fedora by Giordano

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Spoletta in Tosca by Puccini

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Bénédict in Béatrice et Bénédict by Berlioz

Staatstheater Braunschweig

Remendado in Carmen by Bizet

Deutsche Oper Berlin

About

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