Long after the Paris world premiere in 1896 Oscar Wilde’s tragedy “Salomé” remained a thorn in the flesh of the establishment across Europe. In Wilhelminian Germany and the Danube Monarchy, too, official art adjudicators considered the subject “repulsive” and the text “an insult to morality”. In the minds of the guardians of public morals the New Testament story of Herod’s daughter was as ill-suited to the stage as it was to pictorial representation, which was experiencing a boom at the time. Salomé’s stepfather, Herod, the Roman’s client king of Judea, Galilee and Samaria who is said to have ordered the massacre of the innocents around Bethlehem, persuades her to dance for him. Encouraged by her mother, she demands to be given the head of John the Baptist as a reward.

Salome

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Do you ever wonder during a symphony concert im Großen Saal how the Konzerthausorchester actually manages to play together so perfectly? What does a conductor and the individual musicians in the instrumental groups contribute? Successful orchestral playing, like successful coexistence in a democratic society, is based on listening to each other and creating polyphony together. In our workshop, you can literally experience this for yourself - even without any previous musical knowledge.

The Orchestra Society

Konzerthaus Berlin

Music is time in sound. Sometimes it is fast, sometimes very slow and extended. The tempo of the music can have a steady pulse like the heartbeat or expand like the universe. In this concert we rush, hearing and feeling, from the infinity of the atmosphere of space through the seasons and times of day to the now, immediately - in this moment.

Children's Day: Family Concert with the Konzerthaus Orchestra

The comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the most well-known and beloved works by William Shakespeare, exploring the power of love, the confusions of human emotions, and the magic of fantasy. The plot skilfully weaves together various storylines: lovers fleeing strict laws, fairy kings and queens ruling over the natural realm, and a group of clumsy craftsmen preparing a performance for the royal court. Amidst a dense forest, a setting full of secrets and inexplicable powers, love couples encounter obstacles that test their bonds. The fairy kingdom plays its own game with human love destinies, confusing lovers with a magical love potion that makes them fall in love with the first person they see. Themes such as the irrationality of love, the boundaries between reality and dream, and the dynamics between power and fantasy are skilfully interwoven. Choreographer Edward Clug, Ballet Director of the Slovenian National Theatre Maribor, dedicates himself to this classic, bringing his unique vision to the stage and transporting audiences with his vision into a world full of magic and deep emotions. The choreography highlights both the comic and dramatic aspects of the story. Clug's choreographic interpretation, set to the music specially composed by Milko Lazar for this piece, tells Shakespeare's story through a contemporary lens – a tale that explores the depths of human nature while remaining humorous and enchanting.  The music by Milko Lazar is a commissioned work that is composed in close connection with Clug's creation and will have its world premiere with the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Lurking in the bowels of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is a long-forgotten realm from the dark ages. In this location, a.k.a the set and props depository, the ghosts of King Gunther, Siegfried and Brünhilde are up to no good, ever fighting over who gets to go on stage next. Nothing’s off-limits to Wagner’s offspring when it comes to winning over the audience! And so it goes: murder and mayhem, drama upon drama, day after day. High time for someone to bang some heads together — and do it with humour, too! Wait a sec: humour!? That’s really not something the German crew knows the first thing about. But then Berlin’s underground scene rides to the rescue: a clique of operetta singers will sort it out – but wait: are these hallowed portals really going to host a work of operetta? Whatever would Richard make of it?

Into the ring!

Music is time in sound. Sometimes it is fast, sometimes very slow and extended. The tempo of the music can be like a heartbeat, have a steady pulse or expand like the universe. In this concert we rush, hearing and feeling, from the infinity of the atmosphere of space through the seasons and times of day to the now, immediately - in this moment.

This season, too, an unusual and personal programme will be presented under the title "Spotlights": musicians of the orchestra will play works that are particularly close to their hearts. The programme ranges from world-famous pieces of the chamber music repertoire to real rarities that are hardly ever heard in the concert hall. Listen to favourite pieces, rarities and evergreens, including works by Bohuslav Martinů, Ernest Chausson and Rebecca Clarke.

Chamber Music IV: Spotlights

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

Audiences exiting the theatre after the world premiere of Richard Strauss’s eighth opera INTERMEZZO felt wrong-footed and out-of-sorts. Instead of drawing on classical material or mythology, the composer had served up a straight story with him and his wife as characters, showing contempt for the boundary between private life and literary work. What they hadn’t realised was that Strauss had once again demonstrated that he was not only hip to musical-theatre trends but could also make them his own: for INTERMEZZO is Strauss’s response to 1920s audiences’ desire for “modern” opera subjects and can be seen as part of a line of avant-garde works by the likes of Arnold Schönberg (VON HEUTE AUF MORGEN) and Paul Hindemith (NEUES VOM TAGE). Unlike them, however, Strauss remains true to his classical sound and creates another of his famous soprano roles, shimmering with cantilenas, in the form of the main character, Christine, the fictional composer’s wife.

Interlude

p>Chamber music is one of the great joys of life for our orchestral musicians. Here they meet up with Lera Auerbach, the composer, pianist and visual artist to whom a ‘Creative Portrait’ is dedicated this season. She will play Mozart's Piano Concerto in D minor, first performed in 1785, in a version with string quintet. As the orchestra plays the role of a partner to the solo instrument in this concerto far more than in earlier representatives of the genre, K. 466 is probably a particularly good choice for such an arrangement!

Chamber music of the Konzerthausorchester

Vienna, circa 1860. The financially strapped Count Waldner is lodging with his family in a Viennese hotel. His only path to solvency is for him to secure an advantageous marriage for one of his two daughters – and the family can only afford to present Arabella, the eldest, in the upper circles of society. To conceal the family’s indigence, the parents have raised Zdenka as a boy, dressing her accordingly. Arabella is not short of suitors but has resolved to wait for ‘Mr Right’. When Mandryka, an aristocrat from a distant region, arrives, he and Arabella are instantly smitten. Arabella only asks to be able to bid farewell to her friends and suitors at the Fasching ball that evening.

Arabella

„It's the sound in particular. Nobody else has it in this way [...] . And I think it's also the way you present the music to the audience. For me, it's very important that you have very quick access to the audience.“ This is how the renowned American baroque specialist, conductor and harpsichordist William Christie describes the French ensemble Les Arts Florissants, which he has led since 1979.

Konzerthausorchester Berlin, William Christie

The Konzerthausorchester invites families to the Great Hall on Sundays at 11.00 - croissants and hot chocolate included! A musician always leads through the program. They reveal secrets from everyday life in the orchestra and invite you to join in. Meanwhile, younger siblings between the ages of 3 and 6 are very welcome at the “Musical childcare”.

Mozart-Matinee

Wagners »Ring«-Tetralogie ist ein Kosmos für sich, der vielfach schon musikalisch wie szenisch erkundet worden ist. Das Opernhaus Unter den Linden ist seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert schon ein zentraler Ort der Auseinandersetzung mit diesem »Non plus ultra« des Musiktheaters gewesen, durch rund ein Dutzend verschiedener Inszenierungen und eine kaum überschaubare Zahl von Aufführungen. Diese besondere Geschichte soll an einem Vormittag im Apollosaal beleuchtet werden, im Vorfeld der diesjährigen FESTTAGE, die zwei Zyklen von Wagners »Ring« in der Neuproduktion von Dmitri Tcherniakov vom Herbst 2022 bringen. Tief wird dabei in die Historie der Berliner Hof- und Staatsoper eingetaucht, mit Bildern und Klängen aus Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, mit Erinnerungen an legendäre Dirigenten und Sänger:innen sowie Blicken auf wesentliche zeit- und kulturgeschichtliche Entwicklungen.

Festtage-Matinee zu »Der Ring des Nibelungen«

Apollosaal

Konzert der Orchesterakademie

To this day, "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks" is one of Richard Strauss' best-known works, not least because Strauss uses the boldness of his orchestral treatment to create a musical depiction of Eulenspiegel's pranks that is as drastic as it is memorable and does not even shy away from the - apparent - end of the prankster on the gallows. Lorenzo Viotti, who not only conducts Strauss' tone poem in this family concert but also explains it himself, returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin with this Strauss programme, where he made his successful debut in 2023 with Mahler's First Symphony.

Family Concert

Originally from the French Basque region, Maurice Ravel had a lifelong penchant for Spanish folk music. Alongside the "Bolero" and the "Rhapsodie espagnole", his short opera L'HEURE ESPAGNOLE, premiered in 1911, is the best-known example of Ravel's sophisticated stylisation of Spanish dance rhythms - and like the "Bolero", the almost hour-long stage work about the sexually unfulfilled watchmaker's wife Concepciòn is a masterpiece of the laconic elegance typical of Ravel. The celebrated mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa can be heard in the role of Concepción, with the young French conductor Maxime Pascal conducting the one-act opera, which is paired with Rimsky-Korsakov's symphonic suite "Scheherazade".

Symphony Concert: Rimsky-Korsakov and Ravel

In immersive soundscapes, musicians from Ensemble Modern and the Apollo Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden invite the audience to explore the creative and transformative power of melancholic worlds.

Melencolia

Berliner Festspiele

With his symphonic poems such as "Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche", "Ein Heldenleben" and "Also sprach Zarathustra", Richard Strauss became the most internationally acclaimed young German composer around 1900. Hotly disputed due to the drastic nature of his musical language, these works made Strauss the epitome of the "young savage", who did not shy away from musical shock value for the sake of effect. With the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Lorenzo Viotti, chief conductor of the Amsterdam Opera and one of the most celebrated conductors of his generation, shows that the fascination of the symphonic composer Richard Strauss is still unbroken today.

Symphony Concert: Richard Strauss

In a courtyard of the Mycenaean palace servant girls speak disparagingly about Elektra. Elektra has not got over the murder of her father, Agamemnon, and the idea of revenge dominates her thoughts. Only one of the maidservants shows sympathy for her and is punished as a result. Elektra is yearning for the moment when vengeance will be hers and fully believes that it will come about by the actions of her brother, Orest, who was brought up in a distant region. Her sister, Chrysothemis, finds Elektra’s existence hard to bear and attempts to protect her from their mother, who has evil intentions. Chrysothemis wants to leave that awful place along with her sister so that they can live in freedom. Their mother Clytemnestra, who has been plagued by nightmares since she killed her husband, asks her daughter Elektra for help and while their conversation lasts it seems as if the two women might be reconciled. But Elektra’s hatred flares up again when Clytemnestra lies to her daughter over the whereabouts of her son, Orest. Elektra replies ambiguously to Clytemnestra’s question about the remedy for her anguish and fear, telling her mother that once the proper animal has been sacrificed under the axe her bad dreams will cease. Two strangers arrive and report the death of Orest. Elektra expresses her desire to ally with Chrysothemis in committing the deed, but her sister cannot contemplate such a thing. Determined to avenge herself, Elektra resolves: “Fine, then, I’ll do it alone!” One of the strangers moves closer to Elektra; shaken at the sight of her physical and emotional state, he allows her to see who he is: Orest. He exits to do the deed and presently Clytemnestra’s screams can be heard as she dies. Whereupon Elektra lures Aegisthus into the palace and he is killed by Orest as well. Agamemnon has been avenged. Nonetheless, Elektra stays in the palace feeling no sense of relief; she dances herself to death.

Events in Berlin

Salome

Deutsche Oper Berlin

The Orchestra Society

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Children's Day: Family Co...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

A Midsummer Night's Dream...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Into the ring!

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Children's Day: Family Co...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Chamber Music IV: Spotlig...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

William Forsythe

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Interlude

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Chamber music of the Konz...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Arabella

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Konzerthausorchester Berl...

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Mozart-Matinee

Konzerthausorchester Berlin

Festtage-Matinee zu »Der ...

Staatskapelle Berlin

Konzert der Orchesterakad...

Staatskapelle Berlin

Family Concert

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Symphony Concert: Rimsky-...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Melencolia

Staatsoper Berlin

Symphony Concert: Richard...

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Elektra

Deutsche Oper Berlin