A motley group of travellers on their way to Reims for the coronation of Charles X is billeted in the Hotel zur Goldenen Lilie. But when it transpires that no fresh horses are available for the stage coach, they realise they’re stranded.

The journey to Reims

Deutsche Oper Berlin

It’s the most performed opera in the German-speaking region, an unusual – and masterly – blend of Viennese folk theatre and fairy tale, mythology and freemasonry mystique: Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE remains a puzzle to this day. Did Mozart and his librettist Schikaneder switch horses from the Queen of the Night to Sarastro half way through? Is the message not one of distrust towards a supposedly infallible priesthood and its simplistic good-versus-evil ideology? Are some Mozart experts right when they talk of a disconnect between text and music? Whatever the answer, it’s the music that allows us to relate to the story’s contradictions. Far from denouncing the characters, it confers an existentiality on their conflicts.

The Magic Flute

The opera gives us scenes from the life of Bystrouska, a young fox. The forester, who has never lost his desire for freedom and love, catches her in the forest one day and takes her home; to him she seems the embodiment of his desire. But Bystrouska manages to escape. In the woods she drives the badger from his set. In her new home she also meets the love of her life: a charming fox courts her and the lovers spend their first night together in the den. They finally wed, surrounded by the animals of the forest. Soon we see the vixen as the proud mother of a crowd of children. But their happiness is shortlived: Bystrouska is shot by the poacher Harasta. Meanwhile the forester and schoolmaster sit in the inn lamenting the onset of old age. The forester reflects bitterly on the death of the vixen. He cannot forget her uninhibited nature, her youthfulness, her urge to be free. In the forest he is enveloped by a quaintly magical atmosphere and falls asleep. As in a vision, a young fox appears to him, the very image of his mother. Life has triumphed over mortality. The wheel has come full circle.

The Cunning Little Vixen

Ed Atkins is particularly attracted to the costumes from the Deutsche Oper Berlin's collection: the masses of different fabrics are lined up in dense rows on sober clothes rails like a compressed store of stories and memories. Each individual item of clothing would tell its own story if you took it off the rail: about the opera in which it was used, about the people who wore it and about the dreams it triggers in anyone who looks at it. For him, this analogue part of his installation forms a counterpart to his video installations, which stage fragments of stories from today's flood of images from digital media, some whimsical, some disturbing. This tension between costumes, opera stories and contemporary films forms the narrative core of Ed Atkins‘ work as a visual and narrative artist – at the same time, he is a contributor to the libretto of Rebecca Saunders’ world premiere LASH on 20 June 2025 on the stage of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

‘Masses’ by Ed Atkins

Jacques-Christophe Naudot, Louis Couperin, François Couperin und Joseph Bodin de Boismortier

Preußens Hofmusik II

Apollosaal

Unterhaltsam ohne jeden Skrupel und mörderisch glamourös! Inszeniert als unwiderstehlichen Sog hinein in das verruchte Chicago der 1920er Jahre entführt der Musicalklassiker Chicago ins trubelige Tagwerk egomanisch getriebener Staranwälte und eiskalter Möchtegern-Celebrities, die für ein bisschen Gesehenwerden auch mal über Leichen gehen. Mehr als 6500 leuchtende Glühbirnen, funkelnde Kostüme und Choreografien mit Strahlkraft machen Barrie Koskys Inszenierung zu einer Hommage an das Showbiz und das Vaudeville. Das Broadway-Musical über zwei todschicke, unschlagbar schlaue und berechnende Frauen entfaltet so all seine künstlerischen Qualitäten in der originalen, orchestral großformatigen Ur-Fassung von 1975.

Chicago

Komische Oper Berlin @Schillertheater

Leonard Bernstein combined classical music, jazz, show music and folk music from various communities to create distinctive musicals that were successful around the globe. George Gershwin also combines classical concert and jazz, and his music is at home on Broadway and in Carnegie Hall. Pianist Kirill Gerstein performs Gershwin's world hit „Rhapsody in Blue“ as a soloist with the Konzerthausorchester under Iván Fischer.

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Iván Fischer

Konzerthaus Berlin

“As for the effect that a work has as a piece of theatre, I’d say that RIGOLETTO is the best material that I’ve ever set to music […]. It has very powerful scenes, there’s temperament, pathos, a lot of variety.” [Verdi to Antonio Somma, 22nd April 1853]

Rigoletto

MACBETH was the first of Shakespeare’s plays to be set to music by Verdi, in 1847. Despite his decades of interest in the English playwright, he did not adapt another work of Shakespeare’s until late in his career. Verdi’s operatic rendition of this tale of murky prophecies and bloody struggles for the throne of Scotland came in the hugely productive decade that Verdi himself came to refer to as his »galley slave years«. Still striving for critical recognition, he turned out a string of operas that expanded on the bel canto genre. MACBETH was part of an evolution in Italian opera, a development that was even more evident in the modified version released in 1865. In typical fashion Verdi roughened up the storyline and injected some emotional twists and turns, intensifying the drama in the process and creating a tense momentum that sends the protagonists hurtling towards their respective gruesome ends.

Macbeth

Betrayal, lost honour, crime and atonement, passionate love, a yearning for death and forgetting… The tale of Tristan and Isolde grew from a Celtic legend into today’s work of mythical stature. It inspired Richard Wagner to his “opus metaphysicum” [Friedrich Nietzsche].

Tristan and Isolde

The focus of the Forum event series in the 2024/25 season is on social science questions explored from various perspectives of science and dance. It provides a space for discussion and association on topics that extend far beyond the stage and invites reflection on the societal role of dance through examples from the current repertoire. On three occasions, dramaturg Katja Wiegand, along with her guests from academia and practice, will examine the complex interactions between dance and current discourses: the first session, Nature Romanticism and Ecology , questions the portrayal of nature in classical ballets, where nature is often romanticized or stylized. In Space and Movement , the tension between architecture and dance will be highlighted. The concluding session, Body and Culture , will focus on the relationship between dance and identity.

Forum

After a forced intermission of five years, the time has finally come again: the foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin with its iconic Sixties architecture will be transformed into a club for the Opera Lounge. The members of the international ensemble of singers will perform twice this season with musical numbers ranging from classical to jazz and talk to rbb presenter Fanny Tanck about their lives and work, while a DJ provides a relaxed lounge feeling during the breaks and drinks can be enjoyed at the bar. An evening for fans and opera novices alike!

Opera Lounge

About 560 employees and innumerable guests behind and before the stage see to it that at the Deutsche Oper Berlin “the cloth is raised”, enabling the audience to leave the scene enriched by unforgettable impressions. We cannot introduce you to every personality at once in our OPERNWERKSTATT series. But if you regularly visit the OPERNWERKSTATT you will gradually get to know them: the clever brains behind the Opera as work of Art, and the dreams, thoughts, emotions and ambitions associated with her. OPERNWERKSTATT brings you together with directors, conductors, singers, study directors, dramaturges, theatre creators. Each event starts with a visit to a scenic or musical rehearsal. After a glimpse into the workshop we shall introduce you to the emerging project and answer your questions. So that you can see what moves us.

Opera Lecture: The Woman Without a Shadow

Opera Lecture: Lash

For our "Expedition TIRILI" we usually travel light and without an elaborate stage set to the daycare centres of Berlin and Brandenburg. Now the "Expedition TIRILI" is also making a stop in the rank foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin for a few play dates and invites you to experience the sounds on the sand-coloured carpet and on brightly coloured seat cushions.

Expedition Tirili

Artistic creation in times of war: This concert features works and presentations by composers who responded to wars and battles with personal trauma or escape into fantastic parallel worlds. Listen to works by Lili Boulanger and Viktor Ullmann, among others.

Chamber Music III: In tempore belli

Forsythe is a legendary choreographer, revered worldwide as one of the most creative innovators of the ballet tradition. Since the 1970s, he has revolutionised dance by intelligently developing academic ballet in a way that frees the human body from its predetermined corset and broadens choreographic expression in unprecedented ways. Many of William Forsythe’s virtuoso compositions have long become modern classics. In this homage, the Staatsballett will perform three groundbreaking pieces by the American choreographer. Approximate Sonata 2016 is a series of pas de deux, offering the performers the opportunity to mutually craft finely differentiated nuances within a choreographic structure whose forms are frequently difficult to sustain. The performers have a balanced agency in determining the dynamic outcome of these forms, striving to accommodate the choices the other is making in order to advance each other’s intentions. For all the hazardous torrent of dancers moving relentlessly around metal tables, One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000) is actually a purposeful chapter in ongoing research into the visual distribution of contrapuntal balletic structure. The work is set up as a linked ‹machinery› that is created through the interaction of three systems of organization: numerous individual movement themes, a dense system of distributed cueing and complex alignments of forms and/or movement flow. Although the dancer’s field of action is seriously delimited, the unyielding maze of tables also offers the unusual possibility of composing interrelated action on three levels. Blake Works I , staged for the Paris Opera Ballet in 2016, was the first work created in the classical idiom after a hiatus from ballet of more than 17 years. The work deploys a distinctly historical approach to the genre, versus the analytical approach used in a majority of the previous ballet oriented works. Blake Works I  radiates an affection for the language of ballet, and even revives several iconic fragments from works of the genre’s great practitioners that had been deeply influential during formative years. The work’s vocabulary is grounded in the French school and makes use of several of the demanding intricacies of that particular style.

William Forsythe

Mozart's Hoffmeister Quartet was written a year after he began composing „Figaro“ and was published by Hoffmeister in 1786. A strange mixture of cheerfulness and melancholy connects the great quartet with the opera. Alfred Einstein said of the Adagio that it „speaks of suffering never before heard in such depth“. Schubert's Quartet in G major D 887 from 1826 was ahead of its time - it took almost half a century for this „uncompromising exploration of the themes of major and minor, life and death, hope and despair“ to find an appropriate response from critics and audiences.

Chamber music of the Konzerthausorchester

Good news for all fans of Sebastian Knauer - the pianist is back at the Konzerthaus with Mozart's Concerto in D minor, premiered in 1785. Compared to earlier works in this genre, the orchestra is increasingly taking on the role of piano partner, which is of course good news for the Konzerthausorchester.

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Jan Willem de Vriend

According to Hugo von Hofmannsthal in a 1911 letter to Richard Strauss, in which he set out his idea for another collaboration between the two men, their next opera would be to THE MAGIC FLUTE what THE KNIGHT OF THE ROSE had been to FIGARO. And the work that premiered a full eight years later did indeed have strong echoes of Mozart’s »grand opéra«: there is the clash of different social classes, the fairytale-like, highly symbolic storyline and above all the strong feeling that ground-breaking change is underway which is challenging accepted orthodoxy and forcing issues of human interaction and values to the top of the political agenda. And in both cases enlightenment is gained only through ordeal and adversity. Here the shadow has a pivotal function as a metaphor for female fertility: the barren Empress and her nurse bargain with the dyer’s wife for her shadow. Only when the Empress rebels against achieving marital happiness and maternal contentment at someone else’s expense does a path to social harmony open up.

Events in Berlin

The journey to Reims

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The Magic Flute

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The Cunning Little Vixen

Deutsche Oper Berlin

‘Masses’ by Ed Atkins

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Preußens Hofmusik II

Staatskapelle Berlin

Chicago

Komische Oper Berlin

Konzerthausorchester Berl...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Rigoletto

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Macbeth

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Tristan and Isolde

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Forum

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Opera Lounge

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Opera Lecture: The Woman ...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Opera Lecture: Lash

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Expedition Tirili

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Chamber Music III: In tem...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

William Forsythe

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Chamber music of the Konz...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Konzerthausorchester Berl...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

The Woman Without a Shado...

Deutsche Oper Berlin