Name: The Csárdásfürstin
Start: 2026-06-21T19:00:00
Location: Volksoper Wien

Nicol Hungsberg

Gerald Maria Bauer

Bernhard Hammer

Roger Díaz-Cajamarca

Gesine Völlm

Miles Hoare

Holger Christian

Johannes Erath

Volksoper Wien

Just as William Shakespeares’ Romeo and Juliet are born into rival families, Maria and Tony are linked to rival gangs. Tony is a Jet, a gang of white American youths led by his best friend Riff. Maria’s brother Bernardo is the leader of the Sharks, a gang of Puerto Rican immigrants. Maria and Tony fall in love, the gangs fight, Tony happens to kill Maria’s brother. Maria, who still loves Tony, agrees to elope with him. But Tony receives a fake message saying that Maria is dead ...

West Side Story

The young successor to the throne Aljoscha is unhappy and tormented by loneliness. He avoids contact with women, yet he longs for another person. Eventually, he meets a young man – who, in Lehár’s version, is a girl in disguise. However, for Dutch director and artist Steef de Jong, the situation is more complex … He relocates the story, originally set in Russia, to a more universal fairytale world, focusing entirely on the slowly blossoming love story. He uses beautiful drawings and animations, filmed live and projected, creating a work of art that blends operetta and animated film, capturing the melancholy of Lehár’s music while also adding humor and lightness.

Der Zarewitsch

The famous chansonnière Sylva is not allowed to marry her noble lover Edwin. His parents arrange for him to be drafted into the army and arrange an engagement to a countess. At the engagement party, the chansonnière suddenly turns up. When it becomes clear that Edwin’s mother also used to be a varieté artist, nothing stands in the way of a marriage between the lovers.

The Csárdásfürstin

Concert of the Children 's Choir and the Youth Choir of the Volksoper Vienna

Emperor Overall is the tyrannical ruler of Atlantis. When he finally declares a war between everyone and everyone else, Death decides to go on strike. In an act of populist demagogy, the Emperor claims the credit for delivering immortality. But with no one dying, the country descends into chaos. The Emperor is forced to accept that his power has been broken.   

Confronted directly with persecution and extermination by the Nazis, Viktor Ullmann composed Der Kaiser von Atlantis (The Emperor of Atlantis) in Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943/44: a harrowing allegory critiquing inhuman warmongering and totalitarian power structures. In October 1944 – along with his co-librettist Peter Kien – he was deported on the so-called “Künstlertransport” to Auschwitz, where Ullmann was gassed to death and Kien died of an infection. Shifting between a contemporary opera, a mystery play and a dance of death, Der Kaiser von Atlantis presents a unique theatrical sound world. 