Welcome to our Children's Saturdays: concerts, try-on activities or guided tours. An exciting way to discover the Opera House and its art forms.

Children's Saturdays

Royal Swedish Opera

Always an audience favorite for its dramatic, passionate music and colorful scenes, “Pagliacci” (The Clown) is a Verismo style opera, featuring realistic characters thrust into everyday life crises. Italian composer Ruggero Leoncavallo wrote both the wrods and the music in 1892, and not only is the opera based on a true story, but it is perhaps Opera’s original “Reality Show.”

The story follows a raucous band of traveling clowns, jugglers, and actors who arrive in a small italian town to perform their boisterous comedy act. Amid the circus-like atmosphere, tensions arise behind the scenes between the actor playing Pagliaccio, the lead clown, and his young wife. Pagliaccio suspects his wife is having an affair. As his personal conflict is mirrored in the drama they are portraying on stage, the boundaries between performance and reality begin to blur. Consumed with jealousy, suspicion, and rage, Pagliaccio is unable to separate his own life from the fictional play they are enacting. A real-life tragedy unfolds on stage while the audience of villagers mistakes the emotionally-charged drama as expert acting.

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Pagliacci

The DeYor Performing Arts Center

The season opens with hair-raising drama and spectacular singing as two of opera’s most extraordinary artists star in Macbeth, Verdi’s thrilling take on the immortal Shakespearean tale of the scheming couple determined to seize power at any cost. Following past triumphs in many of Verdi’s signature baritone roles, Quinn Kelsey is the Scottish king haunted by the ghosts of his murderous ascent to the throne, opposite Lise Davidsen—the world’s reigning dramatic soprano—as the power-mad Lady Macbeth, whose ruinous ambition damns them both. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium for a penetrating production by Louisa Proske, a brilliant young director making waves around the world. Rounding out the all-star cast are tenor Freddie De Tommaso as the heroic Macduff and bass-baritone Ryan Speedo Green as Macbeth’s friend-turned-victim Banquo.

Macbeth

Lincoln Center

One of Italy’s greatest composers embraces one of Shakespeare’s most iconic tragedies. Dark, blood-soaked and unrelenting – and essential viewing for any opera lover.

The Royal Danish Playhouse

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZ_ZQW5C2pw&amp;t=2s

The Artelize Podcast Presenting Will Shutes: 'Bring it down out of the clouds to human being level'

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFe6mW6x9pc

The Artelize Podcast: 'Amplifying What Makes Us Human'. A conversation with Zuly E. Inirio

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

A true grand-scale production, Turandot unleashes the full spectacle of opera: massive chorus, dancers, bold staging. This coproduction with Washington and Dallas extends Opéra de Montréal’s artistic reach across North America.

Turandot

Place des Arts

Verdi said that for his new opera he was looking for a subject depicting "people of special characters as bearers of courageous and varied deeds." He found it in García Gutiérrez's successful drama set in 15th-century Spain. Verdi set this chivalric drama full of twists and turns and compelling denouements to music with typical romantic emotion, and it definitely does not lack magnificent melodies.

The Troubadour

Theater of JK Tyl New Stage

Orpheus dares to rescue his beloved Eurydice from the underworld, only to lose her forever with a fateful glance. More than 400 years after its premiere, Haymarket Opera Company and The Newberry Consort join forces to present Monteverdi’s timeless operatic masterpiece, L’Orfeo.

L’Orfeo

Holtschneider Performance Center

Overflowing with gorgeous melody and hilarious hijinks, Mozart’s satirical comedy of fickle young love is one of the composer’s most sublime creations. Phelim McDermott’s “colorful, inventive” (The New York Times) staging, inspired by Coney Island in the 1950s, sets the uproarious story at a boardwalk amusement park, where the two pairs of lovers at the heart of the tale find themselves on one emotional—and literal—thrill ride after another.

Così fan tutte

Scalia/Ginsburg is a clever and moving tribute to the extraordinary friendship between two of the most iconic Justices in American history, Justice Antonin Scalia and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Though often in sharp disagreement on the bench, they shared a deep and enduring bond rooted in a mutual love of opera, fine dining, and travel. The work weaves legal citations and excerpts from landmark opinions into recognizable melodies from the operatic canon, creating a tapestry of music and meaning that is at once playful and profound. It offers a powerful reminder that disagreement and respect can coexist. As the opera suggests, “We are different, we are one.”

Scalia/Ginsburg

Herberger Theater Center

Tucson Convention Center

Survivors of the sea, refugees, exiles come together on an island. They create a new society from scratch without the old rules of origin or power. Is it possible to have a community built on love? The hosts for this evening are two intergalactic collaborators: Sun Ra, pioneer of Afrofuturism in response to omnipresent racism, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who sought to flee the constriction of the art world. Both are fascinated by interplanetary vibrations, read the same spiritual book about love in the 1970s and set the cosmos free.

Sunville

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Mithridates, King of Pontus

San Carlo Theatre

Just 18 years old, and already the Queen of France, Mary Stuart is poised, politically savvy, and confident in her divine claim to the Scottish throne. However, the Scotland she returns to bears little resemblance to the one she left behind as a child, and she will need every ounce of resolve to hold onto her crown.  

In Mary, Queen of Scots, composer Thea Musgrave brings one of history’s most captivating figures to the stage with a score as bold and compelling as its heroine. As Mary navigates a treacherous political landscape, she leans on her closest advisors: her calculating half-brother James, Earl of Moray; the enigmatic Earl of Bothwell; and her charming, but weak-willed future husband, Lord Darnley. Slowly, but surely, each man’s hunger for her power reveals itself in increasingly manipulative ways, and Mary must outmaneuver one betrayal after the next.

Making her company debut, Clelia Cafiero conducts this co-production with English National Opera by director/designer Stewart Laing sets 16th-century intrigue against a backdrop of contemporary Scottish life and sectarian violence, lending fresh resonance to an almost 500-year-old story.

Mary, Queen of Scots

War Memorial Opera House

Tannhäuser lived for seven years in the dream world of the Venusberg, but even his return to the stifling society of Wartburg Castle brings no fulfillment. A pilgrim between worlds, he is homeless. The Icelandic director Thorleifur Örn Arnarsson, known for his compelling interpretations of mythical material and grand narratives, stages "Tannhäuser" as an existential drama of identity and a surreal journey into the human psyche. Wagner condensed the search for meaning and stability in a world that seems to be slipping away into a philosophical description of the world.

Tannhäuser

Opernhaus Zürich

A blessing and a challenge in the programming of every major opera house, La traviata holds a special place in La Scala’s history, marked by the legendary 1953 production conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, directed by Luchino Visconti, and starring Maria Callas. That iconic interpretation seemed untouchable until 1990, when Riccardo Muti commissioned a new, lavish production from director Liliana Cavani, with sets by Dante Ferretti and costumes by Gabriella Pescucci, featuring an all-young cast. This evocative and poetic staging returns to the stage in 2026, conducted by Michele Gamba, who in recent years has led major productions at La Scala including Rigoletto, Médée, Turandot, and Tosca. The cast is unmissable: alongside the charismatic Nadine Sierra in the title role, Piero Pretti and Iván Ayón Rivas alternate as Alfredo, with Boris Pinkhasovich and Amartuvshin Enkhbat as Giorgio Germont

La traviata

Teatro alla Scala

Is Carmen’s gaze only to be compared with that of a wild animal? The French writer Prosper Mérimée explored this question in his novella Carmen, which was the basis for Georges Bizet’s (1838-1875) final opera, which premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875. Carmen’s air of seduction is both her weapon and her downfall, for in the end she dies at the hands of her jealous lover, Don José. Carmen refuses to be told what to do and certainly doesn’t want to be rescued by Don José in the shifting sands in front of the bullfighting arena. She prefers death to having her life decided by others. In the extremely popular and passionate “Habanera” aria, which is our first encounter with Carmen, she paints a picture of herself: “Love is a rebellious bird that none can tame.” Her indomitable desire for freedom is stamped in her DNA.

Carmen

Semperoper Dresden

Performed for the first time at Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, Pagliacci is a manifesto of the Giovane Scuola. However, the grim story narrated by Leoncavallo develops through a musical dramaturgy with characters that were remarkably innovative for that period, so much so that they can be considered an anticipation of aspects that will be found in a reworked form in early twentieth century theatre. The fall of the so-called ‘fourth wall’ – with the appearance outside the curtain of the Prologue, which disqualifies the theatrical conception of the author –, the tragic reality that bursts onto the scene of the comedy, when Canio’s jealousy results in the double murder of Nedda and her lover, are all precursors of Pirandello’s ‘metateatro’ or theatre within theatre. In the same way, the crime of passion, physical deformity as a sign of inner perversion, and the squalid life of comedians are all themes that are present in this single act, all of which will be found in various authors of early twentieth century Expressionism: from Berg to Hindemith, and the pair Brecht and Weill. As for the Commedia dell ‘Arte stock characters evoked by Leoncavallo’s tale, they in particular will go on to be a source of inspiration for composers such as Malipiero, Strauss, Busoni, and Casella. All of this shows that, his immediate melodic appeal aside (a mention of ‘Vesti la giubba’ suffices, which is so popular with the general public), the masterpiece of the Neapolitan composer deserves a more careful evaluation.

Teatro Malibran

"I lived for art, I lived for love." In a dictatorship, the singer Floria Tosca fights for her great love, the painter Cavaradossi. Threatened by the ruthless police chief Baron Scarpia, she sees no other way out than to kill him. However, her love for Cavaradossi remains unfulfilled: contrary to their prior agreement, his execution is not staged, but the bullet strikes him dead. In despair, Tosca throws herself to her death. 

Tosca

City Theatre, Bern

On the occasion of the new directorship, Deutsche Oper Berlin is venturing to show a project that crashes through boundaries and opens up new spaces: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht will be shown as a scenic opera production in the German-speaking world for the first time. Stockhausen, visionary of sound, crafted nothing less than a cosmic theatrum mundi about man and woman, good and evil, birth and death with his monumental cycle LICHT. Die sieben Tage der Woche. While other portions of the cycle centre around the struggle between competing forces, the polarity of which reshapes our lives every day, Mittwoch celebrates the utopia of love and the spiritual connection in the spirit of music, as well as the belief that community and solidarity are possible. Stockhausen was uncompromising in his search for a new type of music; he is considered one of the most innovative and yet most controversial composers of the 20th century. A pioneer of electronic music, he also inspired pop music across all genres, including Kraftwerk and Björk. The spectacular centrepiece of Mittwoch aus Licht is the helicopter string quartet, in which Stockhausen expands the musical space beyond the theatre itself: The members of a string quartet sit in four helicopters circling high above the audience. Sounds of strings meld with the helicopter blades, floating down to the audience from above. For our production, the quartet will be performed live as a one-of-a-kind event for the whole city, with film recordings of the quartet becoming part of the production. Award-winning duo Susanne Kennedy and Markus Selg, who caused a sensation with Einstein on the Beach at Theater Basel and Parsifal at Opera Antwerpen, will transform their first opera production in Berlin into an immersive ritual. Maxime Pascal, Principal Guest Conductor under the new directorship, is an expert and passionate connoisseur of Stockhausen and has performed every piece of the LICHT cycle except for Mittwoch.

Wednesday from Light

Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata, to the libretto based on Alexandre Dumas’s novel La Dame aux camélias, about Marie Duplessis, the famous courtesan and idol of Parisian society in the 1840s, is actually the very first major opera treating a contemporary social theme. The work’s premiere in 1863 in Venice was a flop: the audience was appalled that the lead role had been assigned to a courtesan who, what’s more, was portrayed in a positive light. Yet Verdi’s opera soon started garnering plaudits and is now one of the most popular repertoire titles the world over.

Children's Saturdays

Kungliga Operan

Pagliacci

Opera Western Reserve

Macbeth

The Metropolitan Opera

Macbeth

Det Kongelige Teater

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Turandot

Opéra de Montréal

The Troubadour

J.K. Tyl Theatre

L’Orfeo

Haymarket Opera Company

Così fan tutte

The Metropolitan Opera

Scalia/Ginsburg

Arizona Opera

Sunville

Deutsche Oper Berlin

Mithridates, King of Pont...

Teatro di San Carlo

Mary, Queen of Scots

San Francisco Opera

Tannhäuser

Opernhaus Zürich

La traviata

Teatro alla Scala

Carmen

Semperoper Dresden

La traviata

Teatro alla Scala

Pagliacci

Teatro La Fenice

Tosca

Bühnen Bern

Wednesday from Light

Deutsche Oper Berlin

La traviata

Národní divadlo