Director

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci are two classic Italian operas, rich in passion, drama, and musical brilliance.

Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci – Two Italian Opera Classics

Royal Danish Opera

King Henry I, “the Fowler”, is in Brabant to hold the Assizes and assert the nobles’ duty to provide militias to assist in military campaigns. Since the death of the Duke of Brabant, however, the succession has been a source of conflict. His children, Gottfried and Elsa, are wards of Count Telramund, but Gottfried has vanished and Telramund suspects Elsa of having killed him. A duel between her accuser and Elsa’s champion is organised to decide the issue. At the last moment a knight appears in a boat drawn by a swan, ready to defend Elsa’s honour. He is also prepared to take her as his wife on condition that she never ask him his name or where he hails from. Elsa agrees and the knight defeats Telramund.

Lohengrin

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The opera season opens with Puccini’s masterful work in a new staging by Kasper Holten.

Directing a Puccini opera for the first time, Kasper Holten explores the relationship between art and politics in this gripping political thriller—tense, powerful, and filled with dramatic music.

Tosca

The Theatre Birds - A Pixi Performance

Lehár's operetta Die lustige Witwe features timeless hits reimagined in a modern and humorous style by Adam Price, with dazzling staging by Kasper Holten.

EPSG:4326

Die lustige Witwe 2.0

Copenhagen Opera House

A bloody orgy of vengeance has unfolded. Orest has slain his mother and her lover. Manfred Trojahn's opera Orest picks up precisely where Richard Strauss' Elektra concludes – at the very moment when the awareness of guilt emerges ...

Orest

The Royal Playhouse and The Old Stage

In the heat of the moment, the notorious Don Giovanni (aka Don Juan) murders the father of one of his conquests, unwittingly unleashing an ominous force from beyond the grave that can’t be stopped. Accustomed to getting away with anything and everything, he must now face the music as years of cruelty and debauchery come due.

Grammy Award-winning baritone Lucas Meachem returns as the ill-fated playboy, leading a dazzling ensemble of singers including Craig Colclough, Guanqun Yu and Isabel Leonard. James Conlon, renowned for his astonishing command of Mozart, conducts what many consider to be the greatest of all operas in a visually spectacular production by director Kasper Holten, with scenery by stage designer extraordinaire Es Devlin, known for innovative stage designs for Beyoncé, Adele, U2 and others.

Don Giovanni

Los Angeles Music Center

He's back. Opera’s infamous Don returns with an all-star cast headlined by Gordon Bintner, alongside Rachel Willis-Sørensen, Aigul Akhmetshina, Roberto Tagliavini and Bogdan Volkov. Stefano Montanari conducts.

Royal Opera House

In times when the world seems complicated and the economic situation is dire, the longing for someone who supposedly offers simple solutions to difficult problems becomes overwhelming. The 20th century provides ample evidence of this, and the present day offers similar examples. In Richard Wagner’s Lohengrin, it is a mysterious knight who promises to fight for Elsa of Brabant; in doing so, he becomes a projection screen for the yearning of a fractured people for a charismatic leader. Wagner, himself a revolutionary in the mid-19th century, artistically expressed his political utopia of a different world order in Lohengrin – a utopia of saving the world through art, but here doomed to failure. Eric Cutler, a youthful heroic tenor trained in bel canto, sings the title role, while the Finnish soprano Miina-Liisa Värelä provides the necessary counterweight as Ortrud. Her compatriot, conductor Susanna Mälkki, is making her debut with both the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra and the work itself.

Director

Kasper Holten

Events

Upcoming events

Sep 10 - Oct 15, 2026

Don Giovanni · Royal Opera House

Feb 14 - Mar 7, 2027

Lohengrin · Deutsche Oper Berlin

Past events

Oct 25, 2025

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world · Artelize

Oct 12, 2025

Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci – Two Italian Opera Classics · Royal Danish Opera

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