Name: Festive Opera Gala
Start: 2026-06-19T00:00:00
Location: German Oper am Rhein

Patrick Francis Chestnut

Vitali Alekseenok

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Two peoples find themselves in the barbaric grip of war after Nabucco and his troops attack Jerusalem. The Babylonian ruler and Zaccaria, the leader of the Hebrews, do not budge an inch from their opposing viewpoints in this profound conflict, while the daily grind of war continues to bring new suffering to both peoples. The seemingly hopeless conflict does not even stop at their own families: Zaccaria holds Nabucco's favorite daughter Fenena hostage, while she has long since changed sides out of love for Ismaele and lives among the enemy people. Nabucco's other daughter, Abigaille, envies her sister's happiness and her father's throne and forges disastrous plans...

Nabucco

Theater Duisburg

German Oper am Rhein

While the grimy back yards of the Weimar Republic were filled with unemployed singers practicing their skills in the hope of earning enough for a warm meal, night after night the revue theatres of the Kurfürstendamm would present glittering golden dreams to an audience of millions hungry for entertainment. Amid the glitz of the roaring 1920s, the fame of the Comedian Harmonists burned especially brightly: modelled on the American vocal quartet The Revelers, the six-strong ensemble made up of Ari Leschnikoff, Erich Abraham-Collin, Harry Frommermann, Roman Cycowski, Robert Biberti and pianist Erwin Bootz thrilled German audiences with mixture of sassy and entertaining lyrics set to the latest music and sung in perfect close harmony. With hits such as “Veronika, der Lenz ist da”, “Ein Freund, ein guter Freund” and “Wochenend und Sonnenschein” they conquered the concert halls of Europe at record speed and thanks to the modern mass medium of gramophone records they soon became a fixture in living rooms across Germany.

Come­dian Harmo­nists – Best of

The Queen of the Night asks Tamino to free Pamina from the clutches of the supposed villain Sarastro. And so, together with the bird catcher Papageno, he sets out to become a hero. But there are many surprises awaiting him on his adventurous rescue mission... Barrie Kosky's multimedia staging, which the director developed together with the British artists' collective “1927”, has long enjoyed cult status around the world. The imaginative interplay of scene, music and video animation elegantly transposes Mozart's opera into the present day.

The Magic Flute

Three riddles must be solved by anyone who wants to marry the beautiful and ice-cold Princess Turandot. Anyone who fails them will be punished with death. But Prince Kalaf, who is unknown in the kingdom, passes the trial. Turandot desperately searches for a way to escape marriage to the much-hated man... With “Nessun dorma”, Puccini created one of the most famous tenor arias in opera literature. For the Taiwanese director Huan-Hsiung Li, Puccini's opera is a fairy tale, which he tells in the form of a dream that drifts back to the ancient Yuan dynasty.

Turan­dot

Count Almaviva walks on suitor's feet. The object of his latest desire: Susanna, his wife's chambermaid and fiancée of his valet Figaro. Shortly before the wedding, the young couple has to use all their ingenuity to avoid Susanna's erotic advances from her aristocratic employer - turbulence is inevitable!

The Marriage of Figaro

The choreographer duo Iratxe Ansa and Igor Bacovich explore the perpetual motion and transience of time. Under the title “Moto perpetuo” - perpetual motion - they develop their own physical language, which emerges from intuition together with the dancers in interaction with stage elements and light, inspired by the symmetries and circular movements in the music of Philip Glass.

Kalei­dos­kop

The spirit summons the forgotten voice of María through a crack in the pavement and tells her story. She was born on a day when God was drunk. “I am María ... María Tango, María of the suburbs, María Night, María fatal passion, María of love for Buenos Aires am I!” - Searching for happiness, she leaves the suburbs, glows, gets high and plays, sells herself and, in death, becomes a mystical figure. As a shadow, María wanders through a world of surreal encounters, tracing life backwards from oblivion to birth - until she finds redemption through poetry. On a holy Sunday.

Maria from Buenos Aires

In order to foil Alberich’s bid for power, the ruler of the gods Wotan has fathered nine Valkyries, who have the task of gathering an army of fallen heroes for him and bringing them to Valhalla. His intention is that his son Siegmund, conceived from a relationship with a mortal woman, will be the free-born hero who wins back the ring for him. However, Siegmund unwittingly upsets Wotan’s plan by falling in love with his twin sister Sieglinde, a union that gives birth to Siegfried. When Wotan’s favourite daughter Brünnhilde disobeys her father’s order to seal Siegmund’s downfall out of compassion, he banishes her to the rock of fire from which only the strongest hero will be able to rescue her. This will be Siegfried.

The Valkyrie

The king dies. Amfortas, leader of the Grail Brotherhood, is tormented by a wound that will not heal - struck by his arch-enemy Klingsor, to whom he also lost the Holy Spear of Christ that was guarded by the Brotherhood. Day after day, the Knights of the Grail are forced to watch helplessly as Amfortas dies of pain and guilt. Only a prophecy gives them hope: a “pure fool” will one day redeem the suffering king through his compassion and win back the Holy Spear, which the fallen Grail knight Klingsor guards in his magic garden. And then Parsifal knocks on the gates of the Grail Castle...

Parsifal

An extraordinary evening in the spirit of charity with top-class artists on stage and illustrious names in the audience: for the 16th time, Deutsche Oper am Rhein and the German AIDS Foundation invite you to the gala at Düsseldorf Opera House. International opera stars and award-winning singers from the Deutsche Oper am Rhein ensemble will join forces with the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra to organise the gala. All artists waive their fees so that the net proceeds can go to aid projects of the German AIDS Foundation in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia and for affected children and young people in Ukraine and southern Africa.

AIDS-Gala

“What is the price of paradise and who has to pay for it?” asks Belgian choreographer Stina Quagebeur in her new creation "Omelas", which is based on a dystopian short story by Ursula K. Le Guin. Intuitive and urgent, in a composition of organ sound and orchestral force, abstract and narrative at the same time, she creates a journey at the pulse of today.

Orgel­Passion

There's a lot going on in the schoolyard. A storm is brewing. Otto is being bullied by girls, attacked and struck by a yellow lightning bolt. Hannah, Natan and Aziza rush to help their friend. But things get stranger and stranger: a pancake stand appears out of nowhere, a hat too, and then there's the hitchhiker who can make time freeze. What does all this have to do with that parallel world, the floating land, where the super villains are up to no good? The world seems to have gone off the rails. Luckily, the four friends suddenly have superpowers: Hannah's superpower is melody, she can fly high when she sings high. Natan's superpower is harmony and he can multiply. Aziza is incredibly dynamic and fast as lightning. And Otto has the best sense of rhythm and a special connection to explosions. It's high time for superheroes! Only together can they tell good from evil and save the blue pig. The blue pig? Wait...Where did that come from?

The Blue Sow

A sparkling finale with musical fireworks: Once again this year, the Friends of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein guarantee all opera fans a top-class season finale!