Culture creates meaning and structure. The music theater project by Christopher Rüping, Omer Meir Wellber, and Malte Ubenauf demonstrates that it can even provide existential support. Here, for an extraterrestrial group, Mozart's music becomes a daily reminder and admonition of what it means to be and remain human. And what happens when it all falls silent. Thus, we rediscover Mozart's music in distant worlds.

The Great Silence

Hamburg State Opera

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

Theater Duisburg

In love, engaged, married, divorced – between neoconservatism and open relationship models, every life and love decision seems possible these days. Not so for Mozart's characters, children of their time, whose fidelity is put to the test in an obscure wager: Alfonso tests the relationships of his friends Ferrando and Guglielmo, because he doesn't believe in the fidelity of their partners, Fiordiligi and Dorabella.

Così fan tutte

Staatstheater Kassel

No other work reflects Puccini's search for new forms of musical theatre like his three-act trilogy IL TRITTICO, which premiered in 1918. In three pieces with different colours and temperatures, he once again brought to the stage what Italian opera could be in those years. In a condensed version, the second and third parts of the triptych now return to the stage of the Deutsche Oper in Karabulut's colourful production: SUOR ANGELICA, a piece with an all-female cast, is unique in opera history and revolves around questions of life and death and the possibilities in between. In her feminist interpretation, Karabulut explores the possibilities of (female) self-determination within a closed system. GIANNI SCHICCHI, on the other hand, follows the tradition of commedia dell'arte, placing humans at the centre as players and greedy deceivers. With her keen sense of timing and a captivating ensemble, Karabulut reveals the bizarre depths of a hypocritical family gathering once again around the deathbed of their patriarch.

Suor Angelica / Gianni Schicchi

Deutsche Oper Berlin

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A wealthy man wants to immortalise his life and success in an illustrated book, which confronts him with an uncomfortable reality.

EPSG:4326

Written on Skin

Oper Frankfurt

Neither balsam, nor medicinal herbs can provide relief to the wounded and ailing Amfortas, ruler of the Grail kingdom. His path to recovery proves to be a complex one. No member of the Grail community can reclaim the spear which inflicted the wound, but only an outsider, a “pure fool”, enlightened by compassion. Only by the tip of this spear touching Amfortas’s wound can he be healed. On his journey of self-discovery, towards his destiny as chosen deliverer, Parsifal is accompanied, not only by the skilful Grail Knight Gurnemanz, but also by the enigmatic and seductive Kundry, who opens his eyes to sensuality and extrasensory experience.

Parsifal

Max-Joseph-Platz

The Viennese aristocracy are no strangers to family feuds: boorish Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau interrupts the morning tête-à-tête between his cousin, the Marschallin, and her young lover Octavian, to ask for her help with his wedding plans, which are steered more by financial gain than love. Ochs does not suspect that Octavian himself, who is chosen to deliver the engagement rose, will eventually fall in love with the bride.

Der Rosenkavalier

Bebelplatz

Raised by a scheming dwarf and unaware of his true family origins, a young man embarks on an epic journey. Soon, destiny brings him face-to-face with a shattered sword, a fearsome dragon and the cursed ring it guards, and a Valkyrie forced into enchanted slumber...

RBO: Siegfried

Chelmsford Theatre

This opera, which Puccini himself considered his favorite and best work, moves everyone who hears it. In the summer of 1900, Puccini saw David Belasco’s theater piece »Madame Butterfly« in a London Theater, and was indelibly touched. It was a tragic story of very human proportions, coupled with an old-fashioned dose of Far East exoticism. As Belasco did, Puccini set his opera in the present, in the year 1904, the year of its world premiere. The strict rules and customs of Japanese society are confronted by the western world, in the form of the American marine lieutenant Pinkerton. For him, his fictitious marriage with the young geisha Cio-Cio San, also called »Butterfly«, is nothing more than an exotic romantic adventure. For her, though, it is the chance of a lifetime: Fascinated by the notion of the different, freer world that her lover could give her, she’s ready to break with everything she’s ever known. She believes steadfastly that Pinkerton will return to her, even long after he has left Japan. And when he finally does return, after three years, it spells disaster.

Madama Butterfly

Oper Leipzig

Richard Wagner's redemption operas continually invite new interpretations. Joana Mallwitz was already deeply involved with the composer's oeuvre during her time as General Music Director in Nuremberg. Director and musician Johannes Erath will stage the Baden-Baden Lohengrin production. He began his directing career as an assistant to Willy Decker, worked at the Semperoper in Dresden among other venues, and has been awarded the Götz Friedrich Prize and the Austrian Music Theater Prize.

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

The male alliance of the Knights of the Grail is in crisis. Time and again, knights desert to the opposite realm of the sorcerer Klingsor, who had previously been rejected by the circle of knights.

Vienna State Opera

The acclaimed production by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito returns — a staging that delves deep into the supposedly superficial characters. The story of Amina, a sleepwalker wrongly accused of betrayal, is brought to life by a bel canto dream cast featuring Helene Schneiderman, Catriona Smith, Charles Sy, and Claudia Muschio.

La sonnambula

Stuttgart Opera

There are few operas, which from the very first bar endure such intense pressure, few in which the temperature swings from ice-cold calculation to overheating in mere seconds. And scarcely any in which private entanglement and personal tragedy are so interwoven with political attitudes in historical accuracy. Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca has electrified audiences since its world premiere. The shock wave emitted by the opera was so strong that decades later many reactions still tend to point to the bewilderment and overpowering of those affected rather than the qualities of the piece itself and its love triangle surrounding the singer Floria Tosca, the painter Mario Cavaradossi and the chief of police Baron Scarpia. The artistic world of the protagonist couple, Tosca and Cavaradossi, is no colouristic ingredient here, but rather defines the profile of its characters – it justifies Tosca’s eccentricity, just as it does Cavaradossi’s liberality and also explains the singer’s pronounced self-confidence: The heroine of the stage becomes a heroine in real life. Scarpia’s appearance must also be understood as the emergence of his unleashed totalitarian power, and his sexual sadism still today as one of the truly scandalous moments of opera literature. The historical detail is certainly no staffage, but rather forms the, “precondition of the conflict between the representatives of two opposing social systems” (Norbert Christen) in a time of crisis. With his mish-mash of musical recognition motifs, which, with the exception of the rigid Scarpia chords, sensitively adjust to the situations, Puccini achieves a new dimension of through-composed operatic structure – in the intensive cohesion of the score, he nevertheless creates islands in which reflection compacts itself into moments of the highest possible arioso intensity.

TOSCA

Meet Cio-Cio-San — known as Madama Butterfly — a faithful but doomed geisha in love with B.F. Pinkerton. Everyone but Butterfly knows the Navy lieutenant will break her heart and ruin her life.

Opera newcomers will be swept away by the familiar melodies, gorgeous costuming, and colorful sets — and seasoned opera fans will thrill at this beautiful, thoughtful production from Lyric Opera’s own Matthew Ozawa that brings new dimension to an age-old story.

Lyric Opera House

In masks and costumes, the characters in Verdi’s opera try to conceal their identities or to construct alternative ones. The powerholder Riccardo does so in order to avoid those plotting against him, his friend Renato to escape unrecognized, Renato’s wife Amelia to hide her love for Riccardo from her husband, the guests at the masked ball to enjoy playing with beautiful appearances.

Un ballo in maschera

In the 19th century, Penzance was one of the most idyllic and peaceful little towns on the British isle. Pirates... here?! The kings of English operetta, the writing duo Gilbert & Sullivan, had a knack for humorously subverting their audience’s expectations. With this satirical and subversive “recipe,” they created one hit after another.

The rather absurd plot of The Pirates of Penzance would have done proud even to the British humor of Monty Python back in the 19th century: A young man is not trained as a pilot, but instead apprenticed to the Pirates of Penzance because his hard-of-hearing governess confuses the words “pilot” and “pirate.” Upon turning 21, Frederic should have completed his apprenticeship—if only he hadn’t been born in a leap year! According to pirate logic, that makes him just five years old… From this existential dilemma unfolds a love story between the young pirate apprentice and Mabel, a young lady from the British military aristocracy..

The Pirates of Penzance

Volksoper Wien

Director Barrie Kosky plunges us into a nightmarish, wildly exaggerated satire, with marching noses, rolling rickshaw tables, and caricatured protagonists in garish costumes that straddle folklore and historicism, all unfolding within a cold, bleak setting that feels claustrophobic despite its size. This surrealist story of the insecure and paranoid upstart Platon Kuzmich Kovalyov is transformed into a absurd, kaleidoscopic revue of the vanities, an unsettling collision of Wozzeck and Alice in Wonderland with its own ‘irrational’ logic.

The Nose

Schiller Theater

Storm and thunder, unbridled passion, incest and divine wrath - all of this is already brewing in the first bars of the orchestral prelude to DIE WALKÜRE and gives a hint of what is to follow. In DIE WALKÜRE, the first day of the stage festival play DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, Wagner focuses on the generation of Wotan's descendants: On the sibling pair Siegmund and Sieglinde, who, after many years of separation, meet fatefully and fall in love with each other. And on the Valkyries, Brünnhilde and her eight sisters, whose task it is to bring the heroes fallen in battle to Valhalla. When Wotan's wife Fricka learns of the incestuous relationship between Siegmund and Sieglinde, she demands that Wotan put an end to it. So Wotan orders his favourite daughter Brünnhilde to overthrow Siegmund in his battle against his rival Hunding. But Brünnhilde protects Siegmund against Wotan’s command. As punishment, Wotan puts Brünnhilde into a deep sleep and ignites a circle of fire around her, which only one without fear can pass through...

Die Walküre

Cologne Opera

Elsa of Brabant is suspected of having killed her younger brother Gottfried in the forest. When King Henry the Fowler asks Elsa to defend herself, she pleads for an imaginary knight to come to her aid. Suddenly, Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan, appears. He promises to fight for Elsa, but makes her promise beforehand never to question him about his identity or provenance.

Lohengrin

Scylla lives withdrawn into herself, as if in emotional hibernation. Reason, peace, and harmony reign in her cosmos. When Glaucus enters her life, everything changes: She experiences love in all its colors and facets – and does not recognize herself. The opera describes all the lust, wildness, panic, and despair that the young woman experiences as she rediscovers the world for herself. In the end, she will be someone else. Jean-Marie Leclair's rarely performed only opera is a musical discovery. Director Claus Guth returns to Opernhaus Zürich with this new production.

Opera events in Ashland

The Great Silence

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Valkyrie

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Così fan tutte

Staatstheater Kassel

Suor Angelica / Gianni Sc...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: A l...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

Written on Skin

Oper Frankfurt

Parsifal

Bayerische Staatsoper

Der Rosenkavalier

Staatsoper Berlin

RBO: Siegfried

Chelmsford Theatre

Madama Butterfly

Oper Leipzig

Richard Wagner: Lohengrin...

Festspielhaus Baden-Baden

Parsifal

Wiener Staatsoper

La sonnambula

Staatsoper Stuttgart

TOSCA

Bayerische Staatsoper

Madama Butterfly

Lyric Opera of Chicago

Un ballo in maschera

Staatsoper Berlin

The Pirates of Penzance

Volksoper Wien

The Nose

Komische Oper Berlin

Die Walküre

Oper Köln

Lohengrin

Staatsoper Hamburg

Scylla and Glaucus

Opernhaus Zürich