Name: The Opera Ball of the Hanover State Opera
Start: 2026-02-14T20:00:00
Location: Staatstheater Hannover

Luzie Nehls-Neuhaus

Lower Saxony State Orchestra Hanover

Hanover State Ballet

Staatstheater Hannover

Every Saturday morning, we open our foyer to the curious: Come in, take a look around! Enjoy our catering, Wi-Fi, and children's corner, or simply relax. Watch the ongoing rehearsal and meet the State Opera and its staff!
We enrich Saturday mornings with small concerts, discussions, presentations, and invitations to sing along—but the open foyer will also be what you make of it!

The Open Foyer

Beijing, in a fairytale setting: At the imperial court, Princess Turandot has made her own marriage a law: Anyone wishing to marry her must answer three riddles correctly; anyone who fails is executed. When a stranger appears, he decides to take on the challenge. He is the only one who succeeds in solving the riddles and, in turn, gives the princess a task: If Turandot can reveal his name by dawn, he is prepared to renounce her hand and die.
Behind the murderous brutality of Turandot's law and her cold-blooded rejection of all suitors lies a deep transgenerational trauma. These unsolvable tasks serve only as self-protection: An ancestor was brutally abused and murdered by her husband. Jakob Peters-Messer's production examines Puccini's fairytale opera for this deep psychological cause and simultaneously reveals the inherent ambivalence of tragedy and grotesque comedy.

Turandot

"Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Schwartenmagen. Mr. Schwartenmagen. From the Presswurst family. And who are you?"
Lisa and Hagen are baking a birthday cake for their father. Because the refrigerator no longer has everything the recipe calls for, they improvise a bit: orange juice, leeks, and carrots are added to the butter and flour in the mixing bowl. Will the "all-in-all universe cake" taste good? Lisa and Hagen's father will never get to try it, because suddenly the children are confronted with a greedy sausage that lives in their refrigerator, has already stolen eggs and milk, and is becoming increasingly brazen. But the siblings stick together and defend themselves and the family kitchen with ingenuity and a hearty pinch of chili.

Sausage

Ballhof

A white man in a tailcoat stands at the front of the stage—in the hollow of a large, black Steinway grand piano. The man in the tailcoat supports himself with his right hand. The older people in the audience clear their throats a little. It's cold outside. The piano plays. Repeated chords in D minor, a descending motif, full of worry. "I came as a stranger, I depart as a stranger."

 Song Concert: Maximilan Schmitt

Northern Germany's most glamorous party will once again take place at the Hanover State Opera in February 2026: The Opera Ball is a grand show, a festive dance event, lavish decorations, fantastic music, and a lively party—a feast for all the senses! We'll reveal more details in October.

The Opera Ball of the Hanover State Opera

“This is a delicate matter, how will it end?”
Countess, Susanna and Figaro
On the occasion of Figaro and Susanna's wedding, Count Almaviva wants to once again indulge in the long-abolished "right of the first night," setting in motion a machine of confusion, intrigue, and doubt that ultimately leads to the exposure of the Count's abuse of power, but also to the possibility of forgiveness.
Only a composer like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could have come up with the downright ludicrous idea of ​​setting Beaumarchais's La folle journée ou Le mariage de Figaro to music in 1786 , the most politically explosive comedy of those years—a portrait of a society in upheaval and a nobility once again exercising their privileges and blindly running towards their own ruin. The very first bars of the overture make it irresistibly clear: in this play, every bar, every syllable, every whisper carries the undertone of nervous excitement. There is a standstill only at the turning points, those precious moments in which Mozart reveals the inner lives of his heroes. But the adventure continues, and only the onset of night can bring this "mad day" to an end.

The Marriage of Figaro

"Not a pretty sight. Modernity begins."
Christa Wolf on Kleist's Penthesilea
A woman and a man, united by a politically senseless war, obsessed with defeating the other: the Amazon Penthesilea and the Greek Achilles. When Heinrich von Kleist transformed this ancient myth into a play in 1808, he reversed the story's gruesome ending: It wasn't Achilles who slays Penthesilea and then falls in love with the dead woman's body, but Penthesilea who falls in love with Achilles, kills him, and mauls his corpse.
Kleist's tragedy irritated his contemporaries: eroticism and aggression appear interchangeable, women fight like men, hunters become prey, and Penthesilea becomes an animal. This was not how Kleist's contemporaries imagined either antiquity or the theater. It didn't help that the most gruesome scenes weren't shown on stage, but merely reported: Penthesilea was never performed during the author's lifetime. It wasn't until the second half of the 20th century that this idiosyncratic work garnered interest and understanding.

Penthesilea

Song Concert: Beatriz Miranda

Ballhof Two

"If it had been 'Lehman Sisters' and not 'Lehman Brothers,' the world might look very different today."
Christine Lagarde
When Adam Smith, the founder of political economy, was working on his major work, The Wealth of Nations , he lived with his mother, Margareth Douglas. According to Adam Smith, the principle that everyone should pursue their own advantage was the foundation for the well-being of society as a whole. As he developed this fundamental idea, his mother looked after his everyday well-being. And she probably cooked him dinner the day he wrote: "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, and the baker that we look for our food, but from their looking after their own interest."
250 years after the first publication of The Wealth of Nations, composer Andrea Tarrodi and her librettist Helena Röhr ask themselves: Did Adam Smith perhaps overlook something? Are our current ideas about economics still only based on half the truth?
The internationally sought-after Swedish composer Andrea Tarrodi is famous for her colorful, impressionistic orchestral works. She also performs as a singer-songwriter.

Homo Economicus

"How far should our grief go, how far may it go, without uprooting us?"
Paul
After the death of his wife Marie, Paul lives a withdrawn and isolated life in his apartment. He only remains in contact with his friend Frank and Brigitta, who runs his household. But when Paul meets the dancer Marietta on the street, who bears a striking resemblance to Marie, his life, marked by grief, takes a turn: While Paul tries to make Marietta more and more like his deceased wife, the inner conflict between reality and ideal becomes increasingly overwhelming. Marietta initially plays along, but refuses to allow her independence and freedom to be restricted.

The dead city

“By the very nature of things, there is a very close relationship between celebration and play.”
Johan Huizinga
The Hanover State Opera's Children's Festival is a festival and so much more: It's both a large-scale musical theater performance for children and a look behind the scenes of the operatic world. It's a musical theater performance with professionals in the orchestra, on stage, and in the workshops, but also with children and young people on stage who have rehearsed extensively and implemented their own creative ideas with the directing team. Furthermore, the children in the audience support and shape the performance at many interactive stations in the foyer. And at the end, it all comes together again on the State Opera's grand stage! Marveling and participating, trying things out, and discovering go hand in hand in this two-hour festival for the whole family.

The Children's Festival at the State Opera

“You’re so lucky: the cheese fell right on the macaroni!”
Figaro
Figaro is not only the barber, but also the life coach, matchmaker, and information center of Seville. At least, that's how he introduces himself, but what we experience in Rossini's opera casts doubt on this self-characterization: His strategies for the enamored Count Almaviva to establish contact with Rosina, jealously guarded by her guardian, fail from the outset—and when Figaro intervenes, things only get worse. A good premise for a turbulent comedy, which director Nicola Hümpel magnifies with two live cameras: The production presents us with a group of egotists trying to manipulate one another. Eager to always present themselves in the best possible light, they compete for the best positions in front of the cameras, which mercilessly magnify every errant facial expression and every hidden tension.