Name: Ariadne auf Naxos
Start: 2026-04-23T19:30:00
Location: Bebelplatz

Camilla Nylund

Eun Sun Kim

Brian Jagde

Michael Laurenz

Serena Sáenz

Serafina Starke

Roman Trekel

Sonja Herranen

Álvaro Diana Sanchez

Jaka Mihelač

Katharina Kammerloher

David Oštrek

Manuel Winckhler

Sandra Laagus

Junho Hwang

Hanseong Yun

Max Urlacher

Sotiris Charalampous

Hans Neuenfels

Katrin Lea Tag

Andrea Schmidt-Futterer

Stefan Bolliger

Staatsoper Berlin

At the age of almost 80, Giuseppe Verdi, who had already achieved mythical status, once again achieved sensational success with this opera. Using the brilliant libretto of the much younger Arrigo Boito as a starting point, he created a masterpiece of comic opera after five decades of tragic works. Although it is based on the same material as Otto Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, Verdi succeeded in writing a distinct, subversive version of the comedy.

Falstaff

Bebelplatz

Lieutenant Pinkerton has fallen in love with the geisha Cio-Cio-San, known as Madama Butterfly, and wants to marry her according to Japanese custom without entering into a permanent relationship. But Butterfly truly loves Pinkerton and has a child by him. For years she waits in vain for the lieutenant to return. When Pinkerton does return, he arrives with his new American wife to pick up the child, and Butterfly stabs herself with a dagger.

Madama Butterfly

It is one of the classics in the Staatsoper’s repertoire: August Everding’s production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute. The production is unique for its reconstruction of Karl Friedrich Schinkel’s 1816 set design for what was then the Berlin Court Opera on Unter den Linden – including the legendary starry sky for the Queen of the Night, which has become an icon of scenography and continues to enchant audiences.

Die Zauberflöte (Everding)

The tragic drama of an oppressed person from society’s lower classes: Wozzeck, a hardworking but penniless soldier, is increasingly losing control of his life and his mind. He is seized by increasingly violent psychotic episodes, until in a delusion, he stabs and kills his girlfriend Marie.

Wozzeck

Depending on the demand for their work, the penniless poet Rodolfo and his three witty artist friends live either in destitution or in the lap of luxury, squandering their money. When their neighbour Mimì appears in their garret one day, Rodolfo falls in love with the fragile young woman at first sight. But in the face of Mimì’s illness, the struggling artists are caught up in harsh reality.

La Bohème

The heart is an especially popular symbol as the physical locus of human feelings, longings, and pain. A man would like to live without the painful feelings in his heart; his lover wants to unite with his heart, while transcendental powers would also like to win it over. The composer Matthias Pintscher invents overwhelming and gripping sounds for the mysterious and strange events that take place in his opera Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart).

Das kalte Herz

When the revolutionary and painter Mario Cavaradossi secretly attempts to help a political fugitive to escape the city of Rome, his lover, the famed singer Floria Tosca, believes he is cheating on her with another woman. Her jealousy is exploited by Scarpia, the unscrupulous chief of police, in order to help him capture Cavaradossi. Scarpia then makes Tosca an offer: if she gives herself to him for one night, he will release her lover.

Tosca

Elsa von Brabant is accused of murdering her brother. No one dares prove the young woman’s innocence in this mysterious case. Trapped in a reality that no one seems to share with her, a man enters her life promising to fight for her cause – on one condition: Elsa must trust him blindly and never ask him his name or birthplace.

Lohengrin

A schoolyard game: Max has no chance against Kilian and is tossed off the team. Now it will be hard to see Agathe, with whom he has fallen in love. Later, Caspar from his group follows him and promises him a magic potion that will make everything better. Although Agathe and her friend warn Max against it, he meets Caspar one night and allows himself to be convinced to take the magic potion. The next day, it should help for the decisive match …

Der Freischütz für Kinder

Sometimes as a cautionary tale of a wrongdoer who eventually gets his comeuppance, sometimes as an allegory of a freedom-loving, unconventional libertine who questions the moral and religious ideas of his day: The figure of the irresistibly attractive yet unscrupulous Don Juan (or Don Giovanni) is a modern myth, among whose numerous adaptations Mozart’s "dramma giocoso" stands out.

Don Giovanni

The wealthy Count Almaviva has won the heart of the beautiful Rosina under the pseudonym 'Lindoro'. But Rosina’s jealous guardian Dr Bartolo wishes to marry his ward himself and so tries to keep her suitors away. Fortunately, 'Lindoro' is helped by the cunning barber Figaro, who – more or less ingeniously – weaves a web of entanglements and masquerades.

Il barbiere di Siviglia

With his poetic opera The Cunning Little Vixen, Leoš Janáček brought nothing less than the eternal cycle of becoming and passing to the stage. It tells the life story of the young, rebellious vixen Bystrouška, or Sharp Ears, who is captured by the forester and starts a revolution at his homestead before she succeeds in escaping. Back in the freedom of the forest, she founds a family with a fox and is then shot by a poacher. The seemingly so civilized human world looks wistfully at wild nature, which follows its own laws of life and love.

Das schlaue Füchslein

Few operas have more to say about remaining true (to yourself) in matters of art and love than Ariadne auf Naxos: should you cling to the one you love unconditionally, or remain open to new loves?