Experience the vibrant tapestry of theater with an exclusive series of events at Staatstheater Darmstadt. From the timeless myth of 'Orpheus and Eurydice' to the behind-the-scenes magic of theater tours, this cultural extravaganza offers something for everyone. Delve into the world of Hedda Gabler's societal upheaval, or find yourself lost in the fantasy of 'The Ocean at the End of the Street.' Join us as we explore the rich offerings of this prestigious venue through a variety of performances, workshops, and guided tours designed to enchant audiences of all ages.

Unveiling the Intricacies of Theater: A Cultural Odyssey at Staatstheater Darmstadt

Staatstheater Darmstadt is set to captivate audiences with its eclectic lineup, featuring profound dramas, whimsical operas, and exhilarating dance performances. From the psychological complexities of 'Hedda Gabler' to the fantastical realms of 'The Ocean at the End of the Street,' each production promises a unique theatrical experience. Dive into the intriguing narratives, passionate performances, and creative brilliance that define this season's offerings at one of Germany's most prestigious cultural institutions.

A Theatrical Odyssey: Exploring the Depths of Staatstheater Darmstadt's Diverse Productions

Staatstheater Darmstadt offers a rich tapestry of theatrical experiences, spanning from the turbulent world of 'Hedda Gabler' to the mystical landscapes of 'The Ocean at the End of the Street.' With a stellar lineup including contemporary dance and timeless tales like 'Jekyll & Hyde,' 'Tristan and Isolde,' and 'Cinderella,' audiences are set for a season of diverse and compelling performances. Each production promises to engage and challenge audiences with passionate performances and innovative storytelling.

Exploring Dramatic Realms at Staatstheater Darmstadt

Staatstheater Darmstadt is set to captivate audiences with a diverse lineup of performances ranging from dynamic dance workshops to thought-provoking operas and timeless dramas. Experience the rhythmic energy of 'Dance Club Get Funky!' with Pihla Jaala, unravel complex human emotions with 'Wozzeck,' and delight in classic tales like 'Cinderella' and 'The Cherry Orchard.' This season is a rich tapestry of stories brought to life by talented performers and directors, offering something for everyone to enjoy.

Dive into the World of Staatstheater Darmstadt: A Season of Dance, Drama, and Musical Mastery

Staatstheater Darmstadt is set to host an eclectic array of events ranging from dance workshops to splendid operas and gripping dramas. This season features the innovative 'Dance club Get Funky!' led by Pihla Jaala, Wagner's classic 'Tristan and Isolde,' and the timeless romance of 'Pride and Prejudice.' Audiences can also look forward to the magical 'Alcina,' and the historically significant 'Germania Death in Berlin,' among other events. Each performance promises to captivate and inspire, presenting a unique tapestry of artistic expression.

Exploring the Artistic Spectrum: Dance, Drama, and Opera at Staatstheater Darmstadt

Staatstheater Darmstadt is all set to present a vibrant and diverse lineup of events, offering something for every art enthusiast. From dance workshops and classic operas to riveting plays and symphonic concerts, the calendar is packed with cultural treats. Noteworthy performances include 'Dance Club Get Funky!' under Pihla Jaala's guidance, the heartwarming tale of 'Cinderella,' and the powerful drama of 'Wozzeck.' Join us as we dive into the details of these exceptional events and the talented artists bringing them to life.

A Season of Drama and Dance at Staatstheater Darmstadt

The Staatstheater Darmstadt has unveiled its 2025 season, presenting a series of captivating performances that promise to enchant audiences with timeless operatic and theatrical productions. The line-up includes Rossini's 'Cinderella', Heiner Müller's 'Germania Death in Berlin', Auber's 'The Mute of Portici', Berg's 'Wozzeck', and the much-anticipated '10th Chamber Concert'. Each event showcases a blend of historical narratives, comedic twists, and powerful music, featuring skilled performers and conductors. Here's a closer look at what each performance brings to the table.

Staatstheater Darmstadt's 2025 Season: A Dive into Operatic and Theatrical Masterpieces

When Alexej Gerassimez and his colleagues finished their brilliant concert in the main hall of the State Theater in April 2023, they left the audience fascinated and happy. The musicians are now following the popular request to hear them again soon and are once again showing what can arise from the meeting of different materials and substances when five percussionists (including piano) are in their element.

10th Chamber Concert

Staatstheater Darmstadt

Gustav Mahler called his Sixth "Tragic", and although this subtitle was never in the score, it is authentic. Unlike before, Mahler now leans towards the traditional four-movement structure, and he combines the classical form with his narrative, associative and kaleidoscopic style. Mahler was undecided about the placement of the middle movements, and it remains questionable to this day. Perhaps one should not be misled by the subtitle "Tragic", because "tragedy" has a different meaning in general linguistic understanding than in poetics. Mahler was aware of this: "My Sixth will pose riddles that only a generation that has absorbed and digested my first five can dare to tackle," wrote Mahler. Mahler's Sixth can be heard again in Darmstadt after 25 years.

8th Symphony Concert

3rd Family Concert: On your strings, get set, go!

This year, the Luise Büchner Society invites you to celebrate the birthday of the extraordinary Luise Büchner (born on June 12, 1821) in style - and in a very special setting. We welcome you to the picturesque book garden of the State Theater , a place full of history and charm that offers the perfect backdrop for this festive occasion. Immerse yourself in an atmosphere that honors the importance of Luise Büchner and creates space for unforgettable encounters and inspiring conversations.

Summer Festival in Büchnergarten 2025

Büchner-Garten

For the fifth time, the creative wealth of the Hessian State Ballet ensemble, consisting of many individual artistic voices, is also evident this season.

Runway III 2025

Kammerspiele

The Cherry Orchard

Soli fan tutti - 7th Concert 24/25

Chloris has a goal - she wants to marry Thyris instead of her current lover Filen. She will do anything to achieve this. Spurred on by her rival Chloris, Nice can no longer take her friend Thyris' declarations of love seriously and questions his loyalty. Meanwhile, Chloris continues to rage, without regard for Filen, who follows her faithfully and whom she now uses for the game.

The Triumph of Loyalty (Il trionfo della fedeltà)

Prinz Georg Garden

It is hard to imagine today: in 1926, after the premiere of the ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” in Cologne, the then mayor Konrad Adenauer banned the work because of its “immoral” plot. The “Mandarin” paints a picture of the modern city, which was not always idyllic in 1920. Arabella Steinbacher has been one of the world’s most famous violinists for years. She works regularly with orchestras in New York, Boston, Chicago, Leipzig, NDR Elbphilharmonie and the BRSO in Munich.

7th Symphony Concert

On May 24th, 2025, Bob Dylan's 84th birthday and as part of the DARMSTADTDYLANDAYS 2025, the Kassel band Dylan's Dream will be coming to the Büchnergarten. This time in a trio formation with guitar, vocals and accordion. Under the motto Freedom Under The Gun, the organizer wants to raise awareness of the increasing attacks on democratic society and here Dylan's Dream can draw on the entire range of Bob Dylan's work spanning six decades.

Büchnergarten concert

"Man is an abyss, it makes you dizzy when you look down."
With incomparably stirring, moving music, Alban Berg focuses on the inner life of a person who is neither a hero, nor a privileged person, nor a chosen one: the penniless soldier Wozzeck could hardly be worse off. Derided, mistreated and abused by society, he barely has enough to feed Marie and their illegitimate child. The progressive deterioration of his physical and mental health leads to catastrophe.

Wozzeck

Clara Schumann wrote in her diary about the premiere of Brahms's Liebeslieder-Waltzes: "I played very happily, the audience was really enthusiastic. The love songs - Johannes played them with me four-handed - went down well and were very well received." Originally written for vocal soloists, Brahms praised a choir performance as "exemplary". Chorwerk Ruhr presents a program all about Brahms with songs that tell of love and transience.

9th Chamber Concert

Evangelische Stadtkirche Darmstadt

Life is not a children's birthday party. But sometimes it is! After the great success of "blau" by Felix Berner in the past seasons, the Hessian State Ballet is planning another dance piece for the audience of the day after tomorrow. In keeping with the company's tenth anniversary, there will be a lot to celebrate.

Carousel

Ten. Nine. Look at how many rockets are being launched into space right now! And none of them are looking for the little dog that was there first. Seven. Six. Suddenly something moves.

Laika and Margarita / A Cosmic Corrective Measure - woof woof!

Soli fan tutti - 6th Concert 24/25

Aux armes! Aux armes! – To arms! The performance of Daniel Auber's "La muette de Portici" in August 1830 at the Brussels Opera House so enraged the audience that they rose up, stormed out of the theater and started a revolution that led to the founding of the Belgian state.

The Mute of Portici (La Muette de Portici)

Come along and experience an unforgettable family day in the Büchnergarten ! We offer a varied day full of creative and playful activities for young and old. Let yourself be inspired by a colorful program: there will be games, crafts and planting - there is something for every age group!

Family Day in the Büchnergarten 2025

A journey through the development of the string quartet, starting with Joseph Haydn, who, through his further development, elevated the genre to the "premier class of chamber music". Maurice Ravel's only string quartet pleased Claude Debussy so much that he advised him not to change a single note. Dmitri Shostakovich, on the other hand, did not meet the expectations of his contemporaries with his 3rd string quartet. In 1946,people expected a heroic victory composition, but what came out was a cheerful work. Of course, with the ambiguity that is so often inherent in his music.

8th Chamber Concert

Orangerie Darmstadt

6th Symphony Concert

Romanticism: an era of peace, technological development and the rise of the middle class. But also of the impoverished lower classes, the filth of industrialization and colonialism. Movements such as Impressionism prepared the way for a new musical era. The pianist Joseph Moog (“without doubt one of the most brilliant pianists”, Gramophone 2015), who can also be heard as a soloist in the 6th Symphony Concert, takes us into this exciting, sonically dazzling time of upheaval with his program “Belle Epoque”.

7th Chamber Concert

We open the stage and leaf through the dance. Legends surround him. His versatile figure, this hurried traveler, is celebrated in song. The chroniclers draw from his inexhaustible source, the body, and write a new chapter in the book of movement. The 10th anniversary of the Hessian State Ballet provides an opportunity to entrust various choreographers from contemporary dance with short creations. The result is a very special gala in which each of these choreographic manuscripts tells an extraordinary story: interpretations that collide, thoughts that exchange, ideas that diverge.

Chronicles

When a pregnant Joseph Goebbels meets Julius Caesar... then we are in the middle of Heiner Müller's brilliant historical trip through time. With Germania Death in Berlin, he created a visually powerful phantasmagoria in 1978 that travels through around 2000 years of German history. Historical and fictional events are mixed together, alongside figures from the Nibelungen saga there are Hitler and a circus clown who believes he is Frederick the Great. Like a kaleidoscope, Germania moves from one German historical fault line to the next:

Germania Death in Berlin

2nd Family Concert: Romeo and Juliet

Reality or magic? The familiar or the strange? Control or love? The sorceress Alcina goes quite far for love: on her island she uses her magical powers to seduce the chosen one of the hour, while those who are rejected are transformed into plants, animals or rocks and thus decorate the island. But then the fiancée of her current lover Ruggiero lands on the island to find the missing groom. And Alcina increasingly loses control, because for the first time she really loves, and her magical powers are visibly fading... With "Alcina", Georg Friedrich Handel created one of his most successful operas. The bewitchingly beautiful, moving baroque arias illuminate the entire spectrum of human emotions: hope, tenderness, anger, joy - and the insatiable longing for love.

Alcina

A world in which everything turns out for the best? In which forgiveness and generosity triumph over greed and malice? Who wouldn't want that? In Rossini's opera buffa, this dream becomes reality on stage. The title character Angelina does not have an easy life under the arrogance and resentment of her stepfamily. But even her stepfather, the impoverished nobleman Don Magnifico, cannot prevent her transformation from Cinderella into a mysterious beauty: At the prince's ball, Angelina enchants everyone present. But it is not just Cinderella's disguise that causes confusion - the prince himself also poses as a servant and causes all sorts of comical mix-ups.

Cinderella (La Cenerentola)

Soli fan tutti - 5th Concert 24/25

The Bennets have five daughters. The problem: they are unmarried. Thanks to inheritance rules, the only way to secure the family's existence is to land a bachelor of their own social standing. Then Charles Bingley turns up: young, wealthy, good-looking - and single. So it's off to the fight for a good husband! Elizabeth, the second eldest daughter, doesn't like any of this, especially not the strange and rich Mr. Darcy, Charles Bingley's best friend. And she lets him know it. Until the class differences are overcome, until prejudice gives way to affection and pride gives way to loving feelings, there are serious misunderstandings and sharp-tongued arguments.

Pride and Prejudice

The Swiss baritone Äneas Humm, Opus Klassik Young Artist 2022 and praised by BR Klassik for his "joy of discovery and his sense for the subtle nuances", who repeatedly proves himself to be a "musical storyteller with a very special gift of observation", together with the pianist Doriana Tchakarova, devotes himself to the heyday of the romantic song with works by Schumann and Wolf. Pre-romantic sighs of longing resound from Beethoven's famous cycle "To the Distant Beloved".

6th Chamber Concert

You can feel the vastness and harsh beauty of the country in his music. Jean Sibelius is considered the Finnish composer. His works were received with patriotic enthusiasm when Finland remembered its traditions. Sibelius conceived his second symphony on the Ligurian coast in the summer of 1901 and presented it to the public in Helsinki in March 1902. The melodies are reminiscent of Tchaikovsky and Slavic folk music. Cellist Bruno Philippe has performed at many prestigious venues and festivals in recent years, including the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Bayerischer Rundfunk in Munich. The young Lithuanian conductor Izabelė Jankauskaitė first attracted international attention in 2022 as the winner of the Neeme Järvi Prize from the renowned Gstaad Conducting Academy.

5th Symphony Concert

Central station: MOKA EFTI ORCHESTRA

Brooklyn Odunsi Ifeacho, is a Nigerian-American-Hungarian multidisciplinary artist based in Munich and Frankfurt. She combines movement, light art and design. With more than a decade of dance experience - from ballet to urban styles - she is also a visual light artist. In 2023 she founded her brand бza and works as a designer, stylist, tailor and DJ in various creative projects.

Street & Club Styles LAB: Hip Hop

The Street & Clubstyle Special will take place during these two days and we invite you to a diverse program that will inspire both beginners and experienced dancers, with workshops, jams, exchanges and sharing together. The theater will become the central place for encounters and exchanges, where dance styles and personal stories come together.

Street & Club Styles LAB: House

Debby's style is called Afrofusion. The idea behind it is that there is not just one Afro dance style, but rather different styles from different African countries are fused together. Debby's style is also characterized by the fact that female and commercial elements have found their way into it. The aim of Debby's courses is cultural mediation, creating an oasis of well-being and an appreciative place, as well as having fun exploring the body and one's own (unimagined) abilities.

Street & Club Styles LAB: Afro Fusion

An aura of transience shimmers through the energetic, dense dance piece "Last Work" by choreography legend Ohad Naharin. A feeling of clarity and reflection, as if in the center of a hurricane. The dancers fill the room with the movement language that is so characteristic of the Batsheva Dance Company: far-reaching bodies, deep lunges or quotes from traditional Israeli dance formations such as the circular Hora. Despite all its dynamism, "Last Work" is defined by a subdued calm and meditative basic tension, which is carried by the electronic sounds of DJ Grischa Lichtenberger. After the acclaimed revival of "Sadeh 21", Naharin returns with another task for the Hessian State Ballet.

Last Work

For dance enthusiasts of all ages and levels who are interested in creative exchange in movement and new experiences!

It is hard to imagine today: in 1926, after the premiere of the ballet “The Miraculous Mandarin” in Cologne, the then mayor Konrad Adenauer banned the work because of its “immoral” plot. The “Mandarin” paints a picture of the modern city, which was not always idyllic in 1920. Arabella Steinbacher has been one of the world’s best-known violinists for years. She works regularly with orchestras in New York, Boston, Chicago, Leipzig, NDR Elbphilharmonie and the BRSO in Munich.

The Stepford Wives

Pack your suitcase with lots of imagination and energy and travel with us into the world of theater!

Destination: Theater!

PB Music Theater

What began as an open meeting place for refugees and Darmstadt musicians is now a sought-after band project with its own unique sound.

Soundkitchen

He haunts Tolstoy's text like a ghost: Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of France and bearer of a very special project. Like a collective obsession, visitors to Moscow's salons follow every piece of news about the Corsican's private and public life. Admiration and rejection, fascination and fear characterize the Russian upper class, which fears more than just Bonaparte's troops. Because like an invasion, the self-proclaimed world conqueror also brings the values ​​of the French Revolution with him: freedom, equality, fraternity and the abolition of a class-based society in favor of a rule of law. Even in the Frenchman's devastating defeat, the Russian victors pay him tribute, although nothing will change for a long time in the rigid salons of the late Tsarist Empire.

War and Peace

Chamber Spectacle 3

Based on her research “Dances between Order and Disorder”, the Frankfurt-based choreographer and dance professor Hannah Shakti Bühler, together with Simon Mayer, deals with the following topics in her new creation “Choreomaniacs, Cyborgs and other Monsters” (AT): individual bodies as a medium of resistance, collective dance phenomena as a medium of liberation, ecstasy and disciplining of the body. Under the term “Choreomaniacs”, historical phenomena such as the dancing bodies of medieval dance mania or so-called “tarantata” from the southern Italian rituals of tarantism are examined in the context of today's cyborg culture. “Choreomaniacs, Cyborgs and other Monsters” will be shown as a guest performance in Darmstadt in March.

Residence with H. Shatki Bühler

2nd Teddy Bear Concert

In "Oper Otze Axt", the collective "DRITTE DEGENERATION OST" examines destruction as a historical, narrative and musical motif, inspired by the life of the East German punk anti-hero Dieter "Otze" Ehrlich. As a resistant main character, OTZE experiences the increasingly disintegrating GDR, but finds no salvation in the social liberation of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the post-reunification period, but only more invisible walls.

Oper Otze Axt

Brauß was praised by Gramophone Magazine for "the maturity and sophistication of her thoughtful interpretations." She is currently establishing herself as one of the most exciting and versatile musicians of her generation. As a former member of the BBC New Generation Artist Scheme, she continues to perform regularly in recitals, chamber music, and solo concerts in the UK. In 2021, she made her debut at the BBC Proms.

4th Symphony Concert

The heart of the farm worker Nemorino beats for the landowner Adina. Because she shows no interest at all, he digs deep into his already almost empty pocket and spends his little money on a supposed love potion. But the love potion is only red wine, and Nemorino's plan backfires: Adina doesn't even look at the drunken Nemorino and angrily wants to marry someone else that same day. For the two to get together, even more high-proof elixir is needed - and a good pinch of coincidence and luck. According to legend, the composition of this opera buffa took Gaetano Donizetti less than three weeks - the result is a jewel of bel canto full of melodic inventiveness and sparkling coloraturas.

The Love Potion (L'elisir d'amore)

"The maturity and sophistication of her well-considered interpretations would fill any pianist twice her age with pride," wrote Gramophone Magazine in 2017 about the then 22-year-old Elisabeth Brauß. Elisabeth Brauß presents the entire spectrum from subtlety to the power of sound in her piano recital, which ranges from Schubert's A major Sonata, written in the immediate vicinity of the Trout Quintet, to Schumann's Carnaval cycle, composed in the wake of his enthusiasm for Schubert, to Sergei Prokofiev's witty youth work from his days as a student at the St. Petersburg Conservatory.

5th Chamber Concert

It all begins at sea: The knight Tristan takes the Irish princess Isolde as an unwilling bride to his uncle, the king of the victorious power Cornwall. Humiliated and tormented by unspeakable feelings for each other, a death potion is supposed to end both of their lives before the ship docks in Cornwall. But unknowingly, instead of the poison, they take a love potion that changes everything: Tristan and Isolde plunge into an unstoppable affair that consumes their entire existence. The insatiable desire for each other leads to an obsessive longing for death in a mutual love death.

Tristan and Isolde

2nd mini concert

Redistribution is taking place in Germany! A new inheritance reform is being introduced, and up to 400 billion euros will be allocated annually by lottery. The reform is being implemented in the place of all places where the greatest sadness lies - the employment agency. Four characters engage in a fiery exchange of blows in this dramatic social experiment. The start-up founder Silke, who was forcibly disinherited, joins forces with Maurice, the long-term recipient of the citizen's allowance and official expert, to form a blackmailing duo! The two threaten to blow up the overly correct official Gabor's beloved SUV if he doesn't let justice prevail.

Jeeps

Event commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp

Francis Footwork

The  Theaterfoyer e. V. campaign  was founded in January 1973, three months after the opening of the new Darmstadt City Theater, and was intended to help Darmstadt audiences overcome their fear of entering the much larger theater building. Since then, the association has filled our foyer with morning pints, film screenings, chamber music concerts, and musical afternoons.

Aktion Theaterfoyer - Chamber Concert

The "White Horse Inn" is a place of longing for all kinds of different characters. The waiter Leopold is trying to win the favor of his boss, the landlady Josepha Vogelhuber, who has her eye on her regular customer, lawyer Dr. Siedler. He, in turn, is interested in Ottilie, who is staying at the "White Horse Inn" with her father, the Berlin knitwear manufacturer Giesecke. Sigismund Sülzheimer, the son of Giesecke's competitor, has also arrived. He is to marry Ottilie in order to put an end to the legal dispute between the two companies. Sigismund, however, prefers to try to win the favor of the charming Klärchen, the daughter of poor Professor Hinzelmann.

Im weissen Rössl

Double duet in the Kammerspiele. With AMAE by Eliana Stragapede & Borna Babić and Antibodies by Constantin Trommlitz, the Hessian State Ballet is inviting two award-winning contemporary duets to Darmstadt in January.

AMAE/Antibodies

The Trio Orelon is praised for its "chamber music intensity and emotionality" (FAZ) and has earned an outstanding reputation since its founding in 2019, which has been expressed in numerous awards, most recently in the award of 1st prize at the ARD Competition 2023. The program is as profoundly brooding as it is rich in sound,encompassing Weinberg's trio composed in 1945 and Dvořák's powerful F minor work, Wolfgang Rihm's third part of his triptych "Fremde Szene", the result of Rihm's engagement with Robert Schumann's work.

4th Chamber Concert

Wiretapping 3

Soli fan tutti - 4th Concert 24/25

Can looking to the stars save humanity on a destroyed Earth? Can the savior of humanity still be a bad father? In Christopher Nolan's 2014 film epic "Interstellar", humanity searches for its future in the infinite expanse of space. The Earth is destroyed and can no longer produce the food that billions of people need to survive. But the search for new lands demands personal sacrifices. And it is rarely altruistic. When the former fighter pilot and adventurer Cooper sets out on an interstellar search for the future, he simultaneously makes a decision against his nine-year-old daughter, who has been waiting for him for decades. Nolan's film also tells us that time passes at different speeds, but the past can never be undone.

Interstellar: Between the Stars (UA)

Can you separate the good from the evil in people? The ambitious doctor Henry Jekyll has set himself the task of doing just that. He is not allowed to research this on patients, so he simply carries out the experiment on himself. It works: Dr. Jekyll creates his evil alter ego Edward Hyde - but he increasingly loses control over him. Frank Wildhorn transforms the dramatic horror story of a split personality in a relentless battle with himself, based on the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson, into a gripping musical that, with Alexander Klaws in the lead role, shakes up the stage of the Darmstadt State Theater and all moral platitudes.

Jekyll & Hyde

This open class aims to get the body moving through shared practice. The training is aimed at adults, regardless of their previous dance experience. In terms of physicality, the dance class starts at a friendly pace with light improvisations to warm up the joints. Slowly the group experiences what it means to move together in space with others. Here, participants experience a communal feeling of drive by moving together to a catchy playlist.

Dancing

In the end, there is no turning back for the regicide, as he himself realizes. After spilling so much blood, he can only continue to wade through it. Once you leave human civilization, you stay outside it. Crossing the border is irreversible, until you perish.

Macbeth

"While I search for myself or people who were similar to me in archives or on the Internet, I simultaneously find myself documenting the present as if I expected to be erased from history at some point, to perish, to be overtaken."

Butch position (UA)

Terrible things are happening in the clinic rooms of Doctor Prentice's private psychiatric clinic. An interview with the future secretary, Geraldine, takes on questionable aspects when she is asked to undress so that her qualifications can be checked. His wife Mrs. Prentice suddenly appears out of nowhere, urgently in need of a drink after a secret rendezvous with the bellboy Nick Beckett from the station hotel. He now wants to blackmail her with explicit photos. Meanwhile, a commissioner and a state inspector appear, who have their own questions in the spreading chaos. A daring chase ensues in which neither the right item of clothing nor the right gender can lead to the answer. In the end, it all ends with Winston Churchill's penis.

What the Butler Saw

A look behind the scenes

With dreamlike, fantastic orchestral sounds, Pierangelo Valtinoni's children's opera, which premiered in 2022, invites you on a journey into the realm of fantasy. In the desert, a stranded pilot meets the little prince, who has been transported to Earth from his asteroid. While the pilot tries to repair his plane, the little prince tells of distant planets and their inhabitants: of a ruler in love with ruling, a singer in love with herself, a star buyer in love with possessions... and of a fox who explains the essence of friendship.

The Little Prince

The  Theaterfoyer Association  was founded in January 1973, three months after the opening of the new Darmstadt City Theater, and was intended to help Darmstadt audiences overcome their fear of entering the much larger theater building. Since then, the association has filled our foyer with morning pints, film screenings, chamber music concerts, and musical afternoons.

Aktion Theaterfoyer – Cinemafoyer

Aktion Theaterfoyer Darmstadt e. V.

Every Monday you can refine your dance moves with techniques from breaking and contemporary dance under the professional guidance of dancer Pihla Jaala.

Dance club Get Funky!

Theaterfoyer Action - Morning Pint

Alex returns to his hometown. He doesn't remember much about his childhood, but something draws him to the pond of the old farmhouse where he used to play. Suddenly, amazing memories come back. What happened when his best friend Lettie disappeared? Wasn't that pond an entire ocean? Wasn't his father's friendly lodger actually a terrifying monster? Alex immerses himself in a magical world where something evil lurks, reaching out its fingers towards him and the boundaries between reality and fantasy become blurred.

The Ocean at the End of the Street

Centralstation: Kat Frankie's BODIES

On February 2nd, Richard Wagner's opera "Tristan and Isolde" will have its premiere at the Darmstadt State Theater. And on January 12th, there will be a small foretaste of Wagner's great love drama, which premiered in 1865 and is an exceptional, sensual and captivating work of opera literature. The composer adapted the medieval Tristan epic and created music that brings the all-consuming longing of the two title characters far more to the fore than any other opera before.

Tristan and Isolde preview at the Hessian State Museum Darmstadt

Having just returned from a long honeymoon, Jörgen Tesman and Hedda, née Gabler, move into their new house. It is Hedda's dream house, for which Tesman has gone into debt, believing that he will soon become a professor. Everything could actually be so wonderful. But neither of them is made for this marriage. Hedda longs for more influence and adventure, while Tesman's greatest passion is his work and he wants to meet all of society's demands. Then Hedda's former lover Lövborg turns up. He has used her absence to write a groundbreaking work with the help of another woman. Now he is also being considered as a possible candidate for the professorship. Hedda's life plan is slipping through her fingers. Within 24 hours she succeeds in bringing the bourgeois world around her to collapse.

Hedda Gabler

Don't be happy too late is the inversion of the well-known motto. Or as a classic: "Always look on the bright side of life". The motto comes from the comedy troupe Monty Python and is still apt. Children and fools are in a good mood and they tell the truth. They dare to do things that are not otherwise appropriate: to be blunt and direct, to hold up a mirror to others, to look at themselves in it, not to take themselves too seriously and to infect others with their anarchic cheerfulness. Sometimes fools also fib. Never mind. When you laugh, you recognize a truth that you would otherwise only suspect through deep thought. A New Year's concert about fools and comedians in music.

New Year's Concert

A myth that is unparalleled: the legend of the singer Orpheus, whose music reaches the hearts of all living creatures, overshadows the man behind the fictional character. Caught between reality and dream, the spotlight and loneliness, longing for love and narcissism, we follow Orpheus on his journey into the underworld as he demands his beloved Eurydice back.

Orpheus and Eurydice (Orphée et Eurydice)

We invite families to take a look behind the scenes together on a guided tour. We will go on, behind and under the stage and look in the workshops as well as in the costume and prop department to see what goes into a theater. Duration approx. 60 minutes. Recommended age from 5 years. Meeting point: Foyer Kammerspiele (entrance in the parking garage).

Staatstheater Darmstadt

Jun 26, 2025

10th Chamber Concert

22 - 23 Jun, 2025

8th Symphony Concert

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