In the heart of the desert, three fugitive criminals establish the city of Mahagonny. This ‘paradise city’ has its own rules for living life, fueled by the wealth of men passing through from the Gold Coast. Eating, loving, boxing, and drinking are the order of the day. However, this idyllic utopia soon begins to falter, as natural disasters, excesses, violence, and corruption push the city to its breaking point.

Rise and Fall of the City of Maha­gonny

Schiller Theater

Giulio Cesare has defeated his enemy Pompeo and chased him all the way to Egypt. Against Caesare's will, however, Pompeo was then executed by the Egyptian king Tolomeo. The wife and son of the slain man swear to avenge him. Cleopatra, meanwhile, wants the Egyptian throne all to herself. In order to get it, she must get rid of her brother Tolomeo and win Cesare's support. She seduces him, he falls for her - and makes Cleopatra Queen of Egypt.

Julius Caesar in Egypt

Theater Duisburg

After a night in the forest, far away from their parents, Hansel and Gretel can't believe their eyes: a house made entirely of gingerbread! At first the witch living in the house sounds quite friendly, but soon she shows her true colours: Hansel is locked in a cage. Will Gretel succeed in saving her brother?

Karl Dönch's production of Engelbert Humperdinck's fairy tale opera has lost none of its fascination over the years! The indispensable classic in the repertoire of the Volksoper never fails to thrill, complete with the witch's flight over the orchestra pit.

Hansel and Gretel

Volksoper Wien

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

Staatstheater Hannover

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

Bass-baritone Alfred Walker and soprano Brittany Renee headline one of the defining works of American music theater. With its fusion of opera, jazz, and Broadway, the Gershwins’ enduring masterpiece features a number of tunes whose popularity has transcended the opera house, including the classics “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Hailed by The Washington Post as “a Porgy of its time that speaks to ours,” James Robinson’s vivid staging features electrifying choreography by Camille A. Brown, with an all-star ensemble portraying the community of Catfish Row.

EPSG:4326

Porgy and Bess

Lincoln Center

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)

Bebelplatz

In On the Town, three sailors are on shore leave in search of the sights of the city and a charming city dweller to accompany them. Not exactly an easy goal to achieve under time pressure ... Leonard Bernstein’s first musical, staged by musical professional Felix Seiler, offers not only catchy hits, but also humorously drawn characters to fall in love with – and plenty of fun and verve!

On the Town

Oper Graz

“Have you tortured me enough?”
Floria Tosca lives entirely for music and her love for the artist Mario Cavaradossi. When Cavaradossi is sentenced to death for his political activism against an inhumane regime, the singer too is on the brink. The jealous Baron Scarpia tries to blackmail Tosca: If she wants to save her lover from execution, she must give herself to Scarpia. Tosca pretends to accept the deal – and stabs Scarpia. But the path to freedom is deceptive. Scarpia's power extends beyond death.
In hardly any other opera are personal passion and political arbitrariness so closely intertwined and yet so cruelly exposed as in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca from 1900. The relentless reckoning with abuse of power and machinations, coupled with a deeply moving love story, continues to electrify audiences today, with a score that combines gripping drama and nerve-wracking tension with moments of enchanting beauty. Arias like Tosca's "Vissi d'arte" and Cavaradossi's "É lucevan le stelle" are not without reason considered icons of Italian vocal art.

Tosca

The marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice is over: Eurydice is bored to death at home, while the rather untalented violinist Orpheus gropes his pupils. Eurydice takes an interest in the virile Aristeus, who turns out to be Pluto, ruler of the underworld. He takes her to his dark realm. Orpheus remains behind, rejoicing at his wife's departure. But he hasn't reckoned with public opinion, which, in the spirit of bourgeois decency, calls on Orpheus to go to Olympus and assert his claim to the gods for the return of his wife.

Orpheus in the Underworld

Stadttheater Klagenfurt

She lives in the here and now, one of the best-known heroines in operatic history, she makes sergeant Don José lose his mind, throwing his life into confusion. His attempts to make her tow the line fail because she can’t be tied down. They gradually drive each other into corners. Bizet’s music brings the differences in their perceptions of love and relationships into contrast again and again: Their downfall starts with light-hearted operetta music, but ends in tragedy. Barrie Kosky’s production quickly achieved cult status after it blasted onto the stage in  2015, and has lost none of its impact, taking the most performed opera in the world back to its roots - Opéra comique. The story’s interspersed and told using concise texts, steering us towards its tragic end. En route, romantic, amusing moments and wonderful dance routines share the stage. Kosky’s vision is fascinating, toying masterfully with usual Carmen and Spanish clichés.

Carmen

Oper Frankfurt

Elderly King Mitridate wants to marry again, but suspects his sons might dispute his right to his beloved Aspasia and the throne. He therefore spreads the rumour that he died in battle after being defeated by the Romans. Sure enough, his older son Farnace starts pressurising his father’s young intended bride to marry him. But Aspasia secretly loves Sifare, his younger brother, who she asks to protect her from Farnace’s advances. The King of Pontus, believed to be dead, returns in the company of Irene, whom Farnace once promised to marry. Everyone starts eyeing each up other suspiciously. Farnace, in league with the Romans, plots against his father while Sifare und Aspasia are torn between their love for one another and loyalty to Mitridate. Left at the mercy of the King’s jealousy, their desperation brings them close to death.

Mitridate, Re di Ponto

A treasured holiday tradition, Mozart’s heartwarming fairy tale takes the stage in the Met’s abridged, English-language production by Julie Taymor—the Tony Award–winning director of Broadway’s The Lion King. Featuring some of opera’s most popular melodies and brought to life with colorful sets and costumes and dazzling puppetry, it’s perfect for audiences of all ages.

The Magic Flute—Holiday Presentation

Hansel and Gretel, children of a poor broom maker and his wife, are sent into the woods one day by their mother to pick berries – as punishment for larking around instead of doing their chores. When their father arrives home bearing a bag full of treats after a successful working day, he berates his wife, because the woods are home to an evil witch. The parents set off to look for the kids, who have meanwhile filled their baskets but then eaten all the berries themselves out of sheer hunger. They also realise darkness has fallen and they’re lost, so they lie down for the night and say their prayers, falling asleep and having a strange and wonderful dream. In the morning they wake to see a cottage made of gingerbread and other sweetmeats. Nibbling at the house, they are surprised by the witch, who takes them captive, planning to bake the children in her oven. Instead, they play a trick on her and push her into her own oven. The spell is broken and all the children who had been transformed into gingerbread by the witch regain their human form. The pair’s parents appear and the reunited family returns home.

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Be someone else for a night? It’s not just frustrated Rosalinde and her employee Adele, who would much rather have been an artist, who dream of it. Together with Gabriel von Eisenstein, who has just been sentenced to prison, and Dr. Falke, who is bent on revenge, they go to Prince Orlofsky's crazy ball. Here, of all places, all the masks drop. Austrian director Anna Bernreitner stages this most Viennese of all operettas in costumes by renowned fashion designer Arthur Arbesser. It’s an evening with champagne moods, missed opportunities, and the lightness inherent in darkness, musically directed by the Swiss conductor Lorenzo Viotti.

The Bat

Zurich Opera House

Of course, it's much more fun to play than to help with housework! Hänsel and Gretel know that too. It's just a shame that they smash the milk churn during their boisterous games and ruin their dinner. What should the poor family put on the table now? The mother scolds her children and sends them into the forest to look for berries. However, what begins as an adventure soon turns serious at dusk: the siblings get lost and soon fall into the clutches of the wicked witch. Now they have to summon up all their courage and ingenuity to free themselves.

German Oper am Rhein

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

In 1853, the US battle fleet forced Japan to open its ports and enter into business with America. “The vigorous pressing of America’s handshake given kindly, but offered with zeal and capable of both striking and embracing at the same time – rocked the isolation of the Japanese and made them sensitive for their relationship towards the rest of the world“, according to the recollection of Captain M. C. Perry, then commander of the fleet. Puccini himself never visited Japan, but with his “Japanese tragedy“ about the geisha Cio-Cio-San and her love for American Naval officer Pinkerton, he created an affecting testimony for any form of one-sided cultural transfer. By choosing the “American way of life“ Cio-Cio-San accepts a cut-off from her past and her cultural traditions, but is left behind, pregnant and full of hope for the future which is finally cruelly dashed.

Madama Butterfly

Stuttgart Opera

This opera is the world in a theatrical nutshell: it deals with growing older, with trials and tribulations, with intransparent decisions. One person searches for individuality, another is too lazy to do so. Others postulate that the community is the only adequate place for the individual. Power has either been legitimised by long tradition or usurped by new regimes. Values such as assimilation and loyalty are set against self-assertiveness and independence. There is loving and dreaming, cheating and trusting. Suicides are prevented, tests passed, adventures survived. Who is right? Who has been wronged? The world of the magic flute is opaque, and everyone is looking for a pathway: within it, into it or out of it. Who holds the reigns? Who can be trusted? Could it be music?

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

Staatsoper Hamburg

Lieutenant Pinkerton is attached to an American ship currently moored in Nagasaki harbour. He has been courting a 15-year-old geisha girl named Cio-Cio-san, known as Butterfly, who is from a poor but genteel family and takes love very seriously. Pinkerton wants to enter into a “time-limited marriage” – not uncommon between European men and geishas at the time – and is even being helped by Goro, the marriage agent, to find a cottage in which they can spend their honeymoon. The US consul, Sharpless, warns him against such a step, but Pinkerton brushes him off and even toasts the day when he will take an American to be his “real” wife.

Madame Butterfly

Johann Strauss worked on a ballet based on the well-known fairy tale of Cinderella at the end of his life. Only a fragment of the piece survived. Axel Ranisch and Martina Eisenreich have created their own work inspired by this: In Vienna, 1899, Strauss is working on his ballet, but who is the mysterious librettist? And what does Ida Grünwald have to do with the project, when she is supposed to be merely typing the libretto? The story behind the creation of the Johann Strauss ballet, its storyline, and an unusual Cinderella narrative set in our present day – this fairy tale opera blends timelines and explores themes of self-discovery, emancipation, creativity, and the power of imagination.

Vienna, 1899: Johann Strauss is working on a new ballet. A competition is held to find a suitable libretto, but only one truly sparks the composer’s imagination...

The Cinderella Ballet: The talented seamstress Grete works in her stepmother’s fashion salon. Grete dreams of designing her own clothing, but her stepsisters, Yvette and Fanchon, mock her relentlessly. When the painter Leon enters the salon, everything changes.

Opera events in Ashland next month

Rise and Fall of the City...

Komische Oper Berlin

Julius Caesar in Egypt

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Hansel and Gretel

Volksoper Wien

The Open Foyer

Staatstheater Hannover

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: A l...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

Porgy and Bess

The Metropolitan Opera

Die Zauberflöte (Everding...

Staatsoper Berlin

On the Town

Oper Graz

Tosca

Staatstheater Hannover

Orpheus in the Underworld...

Stadttheater Klagenfurt

Carmen

Oper Frankfurt

Mitridate, Re di Ponto

Oper Frankfurt

The Magic Flute—Holiday P...

The Metropolitan Opera

Hansel and Gretel

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The Bat

Opernhaus Zürich

Hansel and Gretel

Deutsche Oper am Rhein

Wozzeck

Staatsoper Berlin

Madama Butterfly

Staatsoper Stuttgart

Die Zauberflöte (The Magi...

Staatsoper Hamburg

Madame Butterfly

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Cinderella's Dream

Volksoper Wien