Name: Tosca
Start: 2025-06-19T19:30:00
Location: Deutsche Oper Berlin

Berlin is renowned for its vibrant cultural scene, with Deutsche Oper Berlin at its heart, offering a spectacular lineup of performances. From the passionate tale of 'Carmen', the whimsical journey of 'The Magic Flute', to the tragic romance of 'La traviata', the opera house presents a diverse range of operatic experiences. Adding to the excitement are jazz-filled 'Swingin` 25' and insightful 'Opera Lectures'. Join us as we delve into the artistry, stories, and talents that make these events truly unforgettable.

A Night at the Opera: Unveiling the Drama, Music, and Magic of Deutsche Oper Berlin

Elena Stikhina

Giampaolo Bisanti

Kyle Miller

Thomas Cilluffo

Martin Muehle

Joel Allison

Youngkwang Oh

Geon Kim

Lucius Gallo

Boleslaw Barlog

Philip Sanjust

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

 Children's Choir of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

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

In describing the attributes of his 1851 melodrama based on Victor Hugo’s acclaimed play “Le roi s’amuse” Verdi also puts his finger on the challenges that any director has to address: RIGOLETTO is namely a masterpiece whose particularity lies in the clash between the characters’ psychology and the improbable action of a fantasy storyline.

Rigoletto

It’s the most performed opera in the German-speaking region, an unusual – and masterly – blend of Viennese folk theatre and fairy tale, mythology and freemasonry mystique: Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE remains a puzzle to this day. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder switch horses from the Queen of the Night to Sarastro half way through? Is the message not one of distrust towards a supposedly infallible priesthood and its simplistic good-versus-evil ideology? Are some Mozart experts right when they talk of a disconnect between text and music? Whatever the answer, it’s the music that allows us to relate to the story’s contradictions. Far from denouncing the characters, it confers an existentiality on their conflicts.

The Magic Flute

Lasso didn’t choose to have the childhood he had, being brought up by Popa, a frazzled single mother who not only has her son to take care of but also a rowdy pub to manage. Which is why Lasso leaves home to seek his fortune. Along the way he hears about Princess Scharada and her three riddles. A man can ask her three questions: if she fails to answer them correctly, he gets to marry her and rule the realm; if she solves the riddles, he is put to death. But whatever happens, Lasso will not only have travelled the world and crossed paths with robbers, wild boars, astrologers, clairvoyants, scheming politicians and stern ladies-in-waiting – he’ll also have found a great friend and companion. In his THE THREE RIDDLES, an erratic blend of fairytale, social drama, road movie and full-scale opera, composer Detlev Glanert presents a witty, zany and slightly scary story of two very different children, who team up to hold their own in the big, wide world and find their own way.

The Three Riddles

Lieutenant Pinkerton is attached to an American ship currently moored in Nagasaki harbour. He has been courting a 15-year-old geisha girl named Cio-Cio-san, known as Butterfly, who is from a poor but genteel family and takes love very seriously. Pinkerton wants to enter into a “time-limited marriage” – not uncommon between European men and geishas at the time – and is even being helped by Goro, the marriage agent, to find a cottage in which they can spend their honeymoon. The US consul, Sharpless, warns him against such a step, but Pinkerton brushes him off and even toasts the day when he will take an American to be his “real” wife.

Madame Butterfly

It is common knowledge that Giuseppe Verdi, by nature a critical man, not only found much to disapprove of in the trends of his day but also subjected his own work to a continuous process of editing and revision.

Don Carlo

Violetta Valery, living in kept splendour at the expense of Baron Douphol, has apparently recovered from a serious illness. To celebrate, she throws a party where she meets and falls for Alfredo Germont. As their love for each other is frowned upon, they set up house outside of Paris. Alfredo’s father insists that she break with his son in order not to jeopardise the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister. Violetta accedes to his wish and cuts off relations. In a showdown at another party Violetta tries to convince Alfredo that she’s in love with the Baron, causing Alfredo to hurl his gambling winnings at her feet, calling them “fees for services rendered”. Soon afterwards, at the height of the Paris carnival, Violetta is on her deathbed. She receives Alfredo, who has heard from his father her real reason for leaving him. Violetta forgives him, gives him her blessing and dies.

La traviata

With the world premiere of his one-act opera, VIOLANTA, the 18-year-old Erich Wolfgang Korngold shifted overnight from child prodigy to one of the leading opera composers of his generation. For VIOLANTA not only heralded the arrival of a young maestro who was as independent as he was variegated in his musical palette, who had an unerring feel for how to render his vision on stage, and who could write melodies that were both expressive and catchy to boot; the 75-minute work to a libretto by Hans Müller, later to be known for co-writing THE WHITE HORSE INN, also served notice that Korngold had caught a contemporary Viennese mood that encapsulated Art Nouveau, psychoanalysis and an end-of-days atmosphere, a quintessence framed by Freud, Klimt and Schnitzler – all mirrored perfectly in the storyline: Violanta, the wife of Venice’s governor, plots during Carnival to avenge, through assassination, her sister, who committed suicide after being seduced by Prince Alfonso. When the moment comes, however, she acknowledges her true motive: to snuff out her own desire to abandon herself to passion. She sacrifices herself to free herself from “lust and guilt”.

Violanta

A nation is cowed by its princess. Turandot, beautiful and fascinating representative of a royal dynasty, presides over a gruesome ritual: only her marriage to a suitor will bring an end to the violence, but no would-be bridegroom has yet managed to solve the riddles. The same old spectacle plays out, ending in yet another execution, until Calaf, the son of a deposed ruler from a foreign land, unexpectedly answers the riddles correctly. He then turns the tables on Turandot, forcing her to answer his own question if she wants to steal out of her obligation. Puccini’s times are changing rapidly, the art world is going through drastic transformation and new, abstract forms are being coined to reflect modern-day experience. And the composer, in his early 60s, is again trying to break new ground.

Turandot

In a courtyard of the Mycenaean palace servant girls speak disparagingly about Elektra. Elektra has not got over the murder of her father, Agamemnon, and the idea of revenge dominates her thoughts. Only one of the maidservants shows sympathy for her and is punished as a result. Elektra is yearning for the moment when vengeance will be hers and fully believes that it will come about by the actions of her brother, Orest, who was brought up in a distant region. Her sister, Chrysothemis, finds Elektra’s existence hard to bear and attempts to protect her from their mother, who has evil intentions. Chrysothemis wants to leave that awful place along with her sister so that they can live in freedom. Their mother Clytemnestra, who has been plagued by nightmares since she killed her husband, asks her daughter Elektra for help and while their conversation lasts it seems as if the two women might be reconciled. But Elektra’s hatred flares up again when Clytemnestra lies to her daughter over the whereabouts of her son, Orest. Elektra replies ambiguously to Clytemnestra’s question about the remedy for her anguish and fear, telling her mother that once the proper animal has been sacrificed under the axe her bad dreams will cease. Two strangers arrive and report the death of Orest. Elektra expresses her desire to ally with Chrysothemis in committing the deed, but her sister cannot contemplate such a thing. Determined to avenge herself, Elektra resolves: “Fine, then, I’ll do it alone!” One of the strangers moves closer to Elektra; shaken at the sight of her physical and emotional state, he allows her to see who he is: Orest. He exits to do the deed and presently Clytemnestra’s screams can be heard as she dies. Whereupon Elektra lures Aegisthus into the palace and he is killed by Orest as well. Agamemnon has been avenged. Nonetheless, Elektra stays in the palace feeling no sense of relief; she dances herself to death.

Elektra

Following on from Puccini’s LA RONDINE and Johann Strauss’s DIE FLEDERMAUS, Rolando Villazón returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin to tackle one of the great comedies of the bel canto genre and demonstrate that he can do humour. L’ITALIANA IN ALGERI remains one of the most popular works by Gioacchino Rossini, who is said to have dashed the piece off in less than a month and was a tender 21 years of age when the opera premiered at Venice’s Teatro San Benedetto in 1813. It’s a testament to Rossini’s boldness that he chose material that had been set to music only a few years before by his more experienced colleague Luigi Mosca. His audacity paid off, with the subsequent triumph bringing him immediate fame across Italy and widespread popularity soon afterwards throughout Europe.

L’Italiana in Algeri

The opportunity is unique and will never be repeated: On a Sunday morning before the big event of the premiere or world premiere, Artistic Director Christian Spuck and Dramaturg Katja Wiegand welcome you to a premiere talk. This classic format allows for unique insights into the new productions, which are often only available through personal interaction with the artists on the team. It's an opportunity to experience the atmosphere that characterizes the exciting days leading up to every ballet premiere.

Premiere Talk: Nureyev

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

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