Singer

How do I become what I am not? Between appearance and reality, director Tatjana Gürbaca searches for the melancholic undertones in Gioachino Rossini's masterful comedy. Behind some comic masquerades lies the desire to escape one's role, behind some triumphant vocal acrobatics the fear of missing out on life. Can there ever be a winner in the pursuit of happiness? A masterpiece for all time.

The Barber of Seville

Hamburg State Opera

Maria and Elisabetta: two queens fight for power and love. Between them stands Count Leicester, Elisabetta's lover, who is attracted to Maria. The two women meet in the park of Fotheringhay Castle - a duel of emotions, fought with the weapons of bel canto, coloratura on a knife's edge. In the end, the Catholic Maria will ascend the scaffold with her head held high, while the Protestant Elisabetta will keep her throne but lose her love.

Mary Stuart

Violetta is the most sought-after courtesan of the Parisian demimonde. However, her encounter with Alfredo makes her pleasure-seeking life seem questionable: they fall in love and try to build a life for themselves, far from the fast pleasures of the city...

La Traviata

A REDISCOVERY - NATIONAL EPIC OR FAIRYTALE OPERA ABOUT THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL?

Who is good and who is evil in this fairytale opera - and why? The nucleus of Pushkin's setting of Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka is the abduction of the princess's daughter Lyudmila from Kiev, the center of both the Russian and Ukrainian founding myths. For Ruslan, the warrior promised to her, this marks the beginning of an adventurous journey through the magical realm of a powerful dwarf. The rescue operation escalates into a showdown between the men fighting for Lyudmila. But she herself increasingly becomes a distant vision of love - the longed-for prize for heroism. In 1842, in the midst of the awakening Russian national sentiment, Glinka conceived the idea of a culturally united tsarist empire, in which he merged Slavic, Finnish and Arabic melos with the bel canto fashion of his time.

Ruslan und Ljudmila

Tired of the big city and its abundance of parties and women, the dandy Eugene Onegin travels to the countryside, where he meets Tatjana, the daughter of an estate owner. Dreaming of romantic love as described in books, she thinks she has found it in Onegin. However, he is unwilling to be tied down. After brusquely rejecting her, it is only years later that Onegin comes to understand his awful mistake and his lack of courage. Yet the realization comes too late: Tatjana has already become the wife of Prince Gremin. Tchaikovsky based his touching and intimate masterpiece from 1878 on the novel in verse by Alexander Pushkin. The opera not only illuminates the torn inner lives of the protagonists, but also the pitfalls of modern relationships. Markus Bothe breaks up the story's chronology using flashbacks of the various characters to create an allusive series of images in which memory, mood and the drama of the present flow seamlessly into one another.

Eugen Onegin

Semperoper Dresden

Oedipus confronts the secrets of the oracle, Macbeth confronts the prophecies of the witches: a sudden utterance from another world—and a few words change an entire life. The moira is revealed. While Oedipus seeks to flee the tragic fate promised to him, a twofold process is triggered in Macbeth. First, he reacts to the announcement that he will soon become king by attempting to ascend to the promised heights and acts accordingly: He kills. Having attained dominion and power, he then defies the second part of the prophecy: He kills again. Afterward, he becomes the plaything of his madness, his fear, his moral fall: He kills again and again.

Macbeth

Great Festival House

Hatred, jealousy and loss: Sergei Rachmaninoff creates a dark world with powerful colours in his one-act opera Francesca da Rimini. Against this backdrop, the heroine’s brief happiness in love shines all the more brightly. Kirill Petrenko presents the impassioned score with acclaimed soloists in a concert performance. Sofia Gubaidulina’s work The Wrath of God is almost apocalyptically dramatic. And here, too, it is about the hatred that – says the composer – “grows in this world with such force and intensity that it inevitably touches me.” The programme opens with one of the most popular works of American orchestral music: Samuel Barber’s touching and intimate Adagio for strings.

EPSG:4326

Kirill Petrenko with Rachmaninoff’s “Francesca da Rimini”

Berliner Philharmonie

Russia, at the dawn of the seventeenth century. Following the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry, son of Ivan the Terrible, the people long for a ruler who can put an end to hunger and oppression. Boyar Boris Godunov is installed on the throne, but doubts about his involvement in the murder undermine his power. He himself is consumed by remorse …

Bass

Ilia Kazakov

Events

Upcoming events

10 - 29 Jun, 2027

Boris Godunov · La Monnaie / De Munt

Past events

May 17 - Jun 17, 2026

The Barber of Seville · Staatsoper Hamburg

Feb 15 - Mar 14, 2026

Mary Stuart · Staatsoper Hamburg

Future and recently performed repertoire

Doctor in Macbeth by Verdi

Salzburger Festspiele

Il Dottore Grenvil in La traviata by Verdi

Staatsoper Hamburg

Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville by Rossini

Staatsoper Hamburg

Prince Gremin in Eugene Onegin by Tchaikovsky

Semperoper Dresden

Varlaam in Boris Godunov by Mussorgsky

La Monnaie / De Munt

Ghost of Vergil in Francesca da Rimini by Rachmaninoff

Berliner Philharmoniker

Ruslan in Ruslan and Ludmila by Glinka

Staatsoper Hamburg

Giorgio Talbot, Graf von Shrewsbury in Mary Stuart by Donizetti

Staatsoper Hamburg

About

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