Staatsoper Stuttgart is set to dazzle audiences with a diverse lineup of operas from classic masterpieces to innovative productions. The program features iconic works like 'Don Giovanni' and 'Madama Butterfly', alongside unique creations such as 'The Red Whale' and 'Casanova'. This season promises to be a thrilling exploration of human emotions, cultural intersections, and artistic brilliance, with talented performers and visionary directors bringing these stories to life on stage.

Opera Extravaganza: A Journey Through Timeless Tales and Modern Interpretations

Stuttgart takes center stage with a captivating series of operas and symphonies presented by the Staatsoper Stuttgart. From the classic allure of 'Casanova' to the contemporary interpretations of 'Winterreise,' these performances promise a grand celebration of music and theater. Featuring innovative productions like 'The Magic Flute' and 'Death in Venice,' this season highlights the extraordinary talents of performers and directors who breathe new life into timeless stories. Music lovers and theatergoers alike are invited to experience the rich tapestry of human emotion and creativity across these diverse performances.

A Theatrical Odyssey: Exploring Stuttgart's Diverse Opera and Concert Offerings

In the heart of Stuttgart, the Staatsoper embarks on an operatic feast, weaving together tales of love, loss, and transformation. From the evocative themes of exile in 'Hotel Savoy' to the whimsical animations of 'The Magic Flute,' this season promises to captivate audiences with a diverse array of performances. As the curtains rise, the city will echo with the sounds of legendary composers like Mozart and Puccini, offering a cultural journey that connects past narratives with modern interpretations.

Stuttgart's Operatic Odyssey: A Journey Through Music and Emotion

Staatsoper Stuttgart is renowned for its captivating opera productions and this season is no exception. With a diverse lineup ranging from classical masterpieces to contemporary creations, the upcoming events are set to enthrall audiences. Highlights include performances by the Austrian band Franui, staging of Mozart's 'The Magic Flute,' and the world of Dostoyevsky's 'The Gambler.' With talented performers, innovative directors, and unique interpretations, these operas promise to be a feast for the senses, weaving stories of love, loss, transformation, and societal critique through the power of music and drama.

Exploring the Rich Tapestry of Opera at Staatsoper Stuttgart

Staatsoper Stuttgart's latest season lineup is a dynamic fusion of classic operas and innovative storytelling. From the timeless romance of 'The Magic Flute' to the thought-provoking themes in 'The Gambler', this season promises to captivate audiences with its diverse range of performances. With celebrated works like 'Death in Venice' and 'Parsifal', alongside the modern narratives of 'Dora' and 'The Robber Hotzenplotz', the opera house offers something for every opera enthusiast. Join us as we explore the creative genius and artistry behind these breathtaking productions.

Staatsoper Stuttgart's Season: A Symphony of Stories and Sounds

Dive into the world of operatic excellence with Staatsoper Stuttgart's exciting lineup for 2024-2025. From Mozart's timeless 'The Magic Flute' to the thought-provoking 'Der Rote Wal', each event promises a unique blend of tradition and modernity. Artists like Sam Harris, Olivia Johnson, and renowned conductors such as José Luis Gutiérrez bring these stories to life in a season filled with dynamic performances, captivating narratives, and powerful music.

Staatsoper Stuttgart: A Year of Operatic Elegance and Innovation

The Staatsoper Stuttgart is set to present a spectacular season of diverse performances, ranging from classic operas like 'Parsifal' and 'Otello' to contemporary works such as 'Der Rote Wal'. The lineup features a blend of innovative productions, notable composers, and a stellar ensemble of artists. With a focus on both historical and modern narratives, this season promises to captivate audiences with its creative storytelling and musical excellence.

Staatsoper Stuttgart: A Season of Artistic Innovation and Diverse Performances

The Staatsoper Stuttgart is set to dazzle audiences with a captivating blend of opera, jazz, and hip-hop, featuring classic and contemporary performances. From the enchanting tale of 'The Robber Hotzenplotz' to the gritty realism of 'Otello,' this season promises a feast for the senses. Highlighting cultural narratives and artistic mastery, these performances push the boundaries of traditional opera while paying homage to the greats like Mozart and Verdi. Join us in exploring the artistic tapestry woven by talented performers and visionary directors.

Stuttgart's Operatic Spectacle: A Blend of Tradition and Modernity

The Staatsoper Stuttgart invites audiences to experience a diverse array of operatic performances that blend classic compositions with modern narratives. From the timeless intrigue of 'Otello' and the mythical journey of 'Der Rote Wal' to Mozart's unfinished 'Zaide', each production offers unique reflections on contemporary themes. The '7. Symphony Concert' and 'Rigoletto' continue to showcase musical brilliance, while 'Opera meets HipHop' promises an innovative fusion of genres. Join us in exploring these captivating performances that challenge and celebrate the operatic art form.

Staatsoper Stuttgart: A Fusion of Classic Opera and Modern Themes

As the curtain rises at Staatsoper Stuttgart, a captivating lineup of events sets the stage for an unforgettable opera season. From the seductive escapades of Don Giovanni to the enchanting adventures in The Magic Flute, and the deeply introspective Dialogues des Carmélites, this season promises a rich tapestry of storytelling. With an ensemble of talented performers and visionary directors, each opera offers a unique lens into timeless tales, inviting audiences to explore themes of love, identity, and cultural memory.

A Symphony of Storytelling: The Diverse Opera Season at Staatsoper Stuttgart

The Staatsoper Stuttgart invites audiences to a stellar season featuring captivating operas and innovative productions. From the enchanting melodies of 'The Magic Flute' to the dramatic storytelling of 'Turandot,' this season showcases timeless masterpieces and contemporary interpretations. Highlights include the coming-of-age journey in Mozart's 'The Magic Flute,' the exploration of societal values in Wagner's 'The Mastersingers of Nuremberg,' and the intense psychological drama of Bizet's 'Carmen.' Join us as we delve into these operatic experiences that promise to captivate and inspire.

Exploring Stuttgart's Operatic Splendor: A Season of Artistic Triumphs

Despite her 127 years, the little witch is still very young by witch standards. And she is also still in her infancy when it comes to witch training: She’s only on page 213 in the big witch book! So it’s no wonder that the “real“ witches don’t invite the little witch to Walpurgis Night. But she would love to! Not only to dance on the Blocksberg, but also to be a really good witch. But that’s where the problem lies: the little witch doesn’t think of a good witch as a witch who hexes well, but above all one who hexes good things. And it’s not just the weather witch Rumpumpel who sees things completely differently ... Otfried Preußler’s wonderful stories about the adventures of the little witch, who becomes a real and good witch, are told as a pre-stage play in the opera house. With lots of music and, of course, with the talking raven Abraxas: “Heia Walpurgisnacht!“

The Little Witch

Stuttgart Opera

The Littmann Sessions are entering their third round – again with regional pop acts on stage of the opera house! In cooperation with the Pop-Büro, the JOiN-Haus, our joint project with the Schmetterlingshaus, and the Stadtgesellschaft, we are once again filling the opera house with exciting new sounds.

The Littmann-Sessions: a pop gala

In his opera Rossini brought together a string of well-known “commedia dll’arte” characters of which he formed an irresistible comedy – full of intrigue and charade: the mercenary guardian Doctor Bartolo and his conniving henchman Basilio, his wealthy charge Rosina and her secret lover Lindoro (alias Count Almaviva) and finally the barber Figaro himself, who assists the young couple in the pursuit of their love against all odds. The opera’s world premiere in 1816 was accompanied by boos and catcalls – only to get firmly established in the world of opera shortly after. Rossini’s work by now has developed into one of the most popular and most frequently played operas world-wide.

Il barbiere di Siviglia

“Al’alba vincerò - at sunrise I will win“, the unknown prince bawls out to the city, making him one of the few heroes of Italian opera whose arioso sleeplessness is due to confidence rather than despair. The others have to despair instead. Primarily the inhabitants of the city, in which – “nessun dorma“ – no one is allowed to sleep because everyone has to search for the name of the unknown man on the highest orders and under threat of the death penalty. That Turandot should actually end well by Puccini’s standards can be felt – like so much else – in the central tenor aria of the work. Puccini knew better than anyone how to force an emotional involvement on the audience through the merciless immediacy of his musical language. The piece itself ends happily, albeit without Puccini, who had to lay down his arms in his battle against laryngeal cancer before the finale was finished. And so Turandot joins the ranks of the great opera fragments of the 20th century. But not only is the piece more or less a chimera, the title character herself also seems to be primarily a projection: “Turandot does not exist! Only nothingness exists“, Ping, Pang and Pong warn the unknown prince to prevent him from attempting the three riddles that need to be solved in order to win the emperor’s daughter Turandot. Anna Sophie Mahler, whose Stuttgart production of Saint François d’Assise 2023 was named the “most unusual opera experience of the year“ by the journal Opernwelt, will set out 100 years after the premiere of Puccini’s enigmatic last opera in search of the “fluid of love“ with which the composer wanted to pacify nerves stretched to the limit in the opera’s finale. Because, this much is certain: this fluidum would also be useful today.

Turandot

Which sounds evoke feelings of home in us? What music do we associate with the places where we have lived our lives? Can a rummaged-out LP sleeve, a cassette box, an aging CD bring memories to life across countries and generations? With questions like these in mind, Croatian composer Sara Glojnarić started a “sound archive of the future“ two years ago as a collection of material for her compositions. In personal conversations and listening sessions with people who have settled in the Stuttgart area since the 1950s, she has since uncovered long-forgotten memories and created an intergenerational songbook of the city: “I want to start where the history books stop – to tell the story in all its splendor, humor and realness. From the perspective of an insider who understands this very special feeling of an emotional balancing act between what we call home and where we are now.“ In a team with Bosnian writer Tanja Šljivar and director Anika Rutkofsky, Glojnarić weaves these immigration stories full of nostalgia and dreams, tragedy and comedy, rituals and linguistic diversity into a poetic-surreal mixtape opera. Together, they take us on a kind of road trip along the former Europastraße 5, a nightly transit route that forms a bridge between the cultural identities of Germany and south-eastern Europe and at the same time symbolizes the longing for belonging. An opera about the timeless utopian power of music as cultural memory. An opera about Stuttgart and from Stuttgart, composed for the state orchestra and ensemble of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, including Goran Jurić and Diana Haller, whose personal musical memories of the journey to Stuttgart will be experienced on stage as flashbacks.

Station Paradiso

“I don’t believe in the right to work; I prefer to believe that the greatest right of man is to do nothing,“ said Rossini. Angelina, his Cinderella, is far from that – she performs slave labour in her bankrupt stepfather’s family. How a prince, for whom the bank account and an army of servants work, gets her out of this precarious situation is a world-famous fairy tale from Charles Perrault to Disney. Rossini tells the story of the power of honest feelings to survive without the well-known miraculous elements, but there is one great miracle: love at first sight. Not at the ball, but when the prince, as a servant, inspects the potential brides in advance. Surrounding this is the madness of exalted dreams of ascent and terrible scenarios of descent, which drives Rossini’s characters forward just as much as the insane energy of his music. The young mezzo-soprano Itzeli del Rosario, who is a member of the Stuttgart ensemble since this season, makes her debut in the title role of Cinderella.

La Cenerentola

Two movie scenes, as legendarily funny as they are gently melancholy: Charlie Chaplin as a tramp eating his shoe. And the iconic dance of two buns impaled on forks. The Gold Rush, Chaplin’s silent film from 1925, tells of the feverish search for gold in Alaska at the end of the 19th century, as well as of unrequited love, friendship, brutality – and ultimately also of happiness in life. After Modern Times and City Lights, Cornelius Meister and the Staatsorchester Stuttgart continue their Chaplin silent film cycle with The Gold Rush, bringing the Hollywood sound directly back to the Littmann-Bau. Chaplin composed the music himself and also includes classics such as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee, Wagner’s “Oh, du mein holder Abendstern“ and Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty Waltz. A film experience with live music as a third dimension.

The Gold Rush

“Exuberant, loud and over-the-top: it’s showtime in the orchestra pit“, as one journalist put it after the premiere in December 2024. And the stage design and costumes continue the theme – albeit with slightly ironic opulence. Casanova is the title of a revue operetta by composers Johann Strauss and Ralph Benatzky. Eric Charell, the “revue king“ of his time, staged the world premiere at Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin in 1928. However, the real hero of the Stuttgart production is not so much Casanova himself, but the character of Barberina, who is embodied on stage by two different artists. She takes over the show and leads us through an evening which centers also on female desire and the lustful play with identities and images of masculinity, femininity and the in-between.

Casanova

“No human dies for himself alone. One dies for others. Maybe some die instead of others. Who knows?“ (Sœur Constance in Dialogues des Carmélites). Few operas focus on the confrontation with one’s own mortality as much as Francis Poulenc’s opera about an order of Carmelite nuns in the turmoil of the French Revolution, which premiered in 1957. The story revolves around the young Blanche, who – plagued by severe anxiety since birth – finds shelter in a convent. But the time of security ends abruptly when the Revolutionary Committee breaks up the convent and forbids the community from practicing its rites. The sisters swear themselves to martyrdom, but Blanche’s fear of death drives her to flee. Eventually she manages to overcome herself: As she follows her sisters to the scaffold, her fear is extinguished in the face of death. In her production of this hybrid of thriller, discourse opera and holy mass, director Ewelina Marciniak, known for her feminist readings, focuses on the dynamics of a community of women struggling for communication and humanity in the midst of terror. And even if the supernatural “Salve Regina“ of the Carmelite nuns on the scaffold leaves no doubt that this opera is a fervent profession of faith by the Catholic Poulenc, the nuns’ willingness to make sacrifices raises questions: where are the boundaries between solidarity, faith and fundamentalism? How lonely is it to die in our secularized contemporary world? Under the musical direction of Cornelius Meister, Poulenc’s powerful music becomes a unique event.

Dialogues des Carmélites

The acclaimed production by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito returns — a staging that delves deep into the supposedly superficial characters. The story of Amina, a sleepwalker wrongly accused of betrayal, is brought to life by a bel canto dream cast featuring Helene Schneiderman, Catriona Smith, Charles Sy, and Claudia Muschio.

La sonnambula

“Et si je t'aime, prends garde à toi – if I love you, take care,” sings Carmen in her world-famous Habanera. Love is a game to her, or at least a rebellious bird. Lively, perhaps capricious, but fun. Don José's love, on the other hand, is really dangerous – not a game, but deadly serious. If I love you, beware: not a flirtation, a threat. Sebastian Nübling's production shows Carmen as a gripping journey into the subconscious of a murderer, far removed from all Spanish clichés. With audience favorite Atalla Ayan as Don José and the Carmen debut of Ida Ränzlöv.

Carmen

Your own daughter’s hand as a prize in a singing competition – imagine that! There could hardly be a stronger sign of the belief in the systemic relevance of art. And indeed, goldsmith Veit Pogner, who offers his daughter Eva as a prize, is just one of many masters from Nuremberg for whom their art is more than just a nice-sounding sideline: it is no less than a community-building and society-improving force. In the Meistersinger, we encounter a group of utopians who are not interested in their origins or money, but in innovation and the future. Eva’s own attitude to the whole thing is, as so often, of secondary importance. She already knows who she would like to be sung by and who she would rather not. Wagner initially conceived Die Meistersinger as a comic opera, and so everything ends on a superficially happy note: at the end, Eva’s crush Stolzing wins the competition and the bride – an impoverished squire, of all people. The future comes from the past, not only in terms of the son-in-law’s origins, but also with regard to the end of the utopia: the whole thing culminates in the Meistersinger Hans Sachs, who mentored the Junker Stolzing to victory, being crowned King of Art: “Heil Sachs!” and glory to the holy German art. In Wagner’s works, the monstrous often peeps through the tiniest of cracks. With the Meistersinger, Elisabeth Stöppler and Cornelius Meister also tell a piece of German history and mentality between awakening and restoration and, in this German Midsummer Night's Dream (Elisabeth Stöppler), focus on the relationship between the generations and the question of why what was is perhaps also what will be.

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg

A coming of age story and a story of love: The Queen of the Night persuades Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from captivity under the high priest Sarastro. Tamino, who instantly falls in love with Pamina, is ready to set off. Involuntarily, bird catcher Papageno is also sent along with Tamino – as companion to the prince. After various trials of initiation, courage and perseverance Tamino and Papageno not only find their station in life as adults, but also each the woman to their hearts’ content: Tamino gains the hand of Pamina and Papageno lives happily ever after with his Papagena. We show the legendary Magic Flute of the Komische Oper Berlin, which director Barrie Kosky staged with the theater video art collective "1927" in an astonishing video animation world for the whole family.

The Magic Flute

Silent night at the opera house? Not this year. On Christmas Day, the Littmann Building will be shaking as Die Nerven take the stage – hailed by taz as “the best live band in the country.” For this year’s Homecoming Concert, the Esslingen-born trio returns (almost) to where it all began. Forget candlelight and carols – this Christmas night is all about raw energy and noise.

Homecoming Concert

When the beach lies beneath the pavement, as the ‘68ers’ liked to say, it's not far to the sea. Gladis, the protagonist of this opera, follows the opposite direction, from the sea to the pavement. Gladis is an orca. And she wants to destroy what she destroys. Cruise ships, superyachts, that sort of thing. Not just in the sea, but also on land. And so she takes up an offer and sells one of her fins for 24 hours of human form. Der rote Wal (The Red Whale) is a fairy tale that approaches a Stuttgart material that is charged like a myth. A “German autumn fairy tale“ about the myth of the RAF, about the question of what resistance is allowed and also about what was and what is true.

The Red Whale

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

“Lie to me, I promise, I’ll believe”. Is a seducer always a cheat? Or is he himself being cheated on in return? Don Giovanni is the incarnation of the irresistible lover; a man who lightheartedly rushes from one conquest to another, who refuses to submit to any kind of moral claims on his person and who pays for his freedom with an incapability of forming an honest relationship with a woman or another person. Even his numerous mistresses are not really in love with Don Giovanni himself, but only make use of him as a mirrored image to project their own different needs.

Don Giovanni

Sometimes it’s time to throw a party! With this music theatre creation, Eric Gauthier invites you to celebrate with us and explore why we humans actually celebrate. To this end, he brings a celebration to the stage with singers and dancers, the Staatsopernchor and the Staatsorchester. To be more precise, many celebrations: La Fest is a journey through the various festive occasions in a person’s life, full of memories of dinner parties, birthdays and dancing through wedding nights, of surprise guests and inevitable farewells. The celebrations of a life as opera. Or the other way round: opera as a celebration of life, its highs and lows. And an embrace of its transience. No celebration without music: Benjamin Bayl has put together a diverse mix of arias, choirs and dances from over 200 years of baroque music. Let’s celebrate!

The Fest

Who has not heard of the robber Hotzenplotz? He first steals grandmother's new coffee grinder which plays such beautiful music whilst grinding. Then Hotzenplotz lures Seppel and Kasperl into a trap, taking them both prisoners. What’s more, the villain then sells poor Kasperl to the great and evil magician Petrosilius Zwackelmann – or is it Seppel he is selling? It does not matter. In any case, it takes a fair amount of courage, magic and the combined help by the audience to rescue the two friends. Composer Sebastian Schwab has newly composed Otfried Preußler's enchanting story as a Singspiel for the ensemble of the Staatsoper Stuttgart in time for Preußler’s 100th birthday - with coffee grinder and, of course, 7 knives.

The Robber Hotzen­plotz

"I no longer have time to think about myself. In no year have I worked as much mentally as in this one," wrote the composer Leoš Janáček while he was working on The Cunning Little Vixen . The composition absorbed him completely, so meticulously did he try to translate the sounds of nature and the animal world into music. Janáček got the inspiration for the story about a young vixen who comes into contact with the human world from a newspaper comic. Nevertheless, The Cunning Little Vixen is not a playful fairytale opera, on the contrary. Two worlds collide, that of the animals and that of the humans. The community around the forester and his family as well as the other villagers is cruel and at the same time full of longing for a better life - but who has the answer to the question of what a real life is like? When the forester and the vixen meet in the forest, nature and apparent civilization come face to face. Thus, The Cunning Little Vixen explicitly shows no cute anecdotes about animals, but a pragmatic, uncompromising world in which it is all about survival. And yet there is room for the love between vixen and fox. Janáček succeeds in sounding out the animal in man and the human in the animal, thus holding up a mirror to us. Almost 101 years to the day after its premiere in Brno in 1924, Stephan Kimmig now turns his attention to an opera full of contrasts and the longing to find a place where one can live free of rules, following Der Prinz von Homburg and Das Rheingold . But does this place even exist?

The Cunning Little Vixen

Rigoletto wants to protect his daughter Gilda from the abusive Duke at all costs – but his revenge turns into the cruelest of all defeats: It's not the Duke, but Gilda who falls victim. Is this the fulfillment of the gruesome curse imposed on Rigoletto at the beginning? Verdi combines the dark force of a revenge thriller with the tragedy of an unconditional, yet one-sided love – and at the same time creates an explosive political drama, which Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito bring to the fore in their production.

Rigoletto

Otello, black, a stranger and yet having risen to the top of Venetian society through military merit and eloquence, marries the beautiful Desdemona. Naturally, this disturbs those around him. His closest confidant, Iago, instigates a jealous intrigue that leads to Otello killing first his bride and then himself. Arrigo Boito, Verdi's congenial librettist, places Jago's commitment to evil at the center as an equal element to virtue. With recourse to Otello's socially agreed otherness, Iago succeeds in bending the circumstances back into a supposed order by relegating Otello to the bottom of the racialized hierarchy. In collaboration with the renowned British video artist John Akomfrah, Silvia Costa scrutinises the underlying social constructions: Who actually defines from where what is foreign and what is their own, who is worthy and who is discarded?

Otello

"A scandal? No, joy. Exuberant joy," was the verdict of the Süddeutsche Zeitung after the Schwerin premiere of SANCTA. Florentina Holzinger's opera performance combines Paul Hindemith's one act opera Sancta Susanna with elements of the Catholic liturgy to create a new and radical vision of the Holy Mass ritual. Together with her performers, Holzinger embarks on spectacular physical borderline experiences and explores individual spirituality and faith, sexuality and pain, shame and liberation. Magic and religious miracles are reinterpreted in an ecstatic celebration of community and self-determination, in which J.S. Bach meets metal, the Weather Girls meet Rachmaninov - and naked nuns meet roller skates.

HOLY

One man. One woman. One separation. Two paths in life that lead back to each other - and at the end, not only the sentimental “I Did It My Way“ look back, but also a powerful look forward, because “The Best Is Yet to Come“. Inspired by the music of Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra, director Ivo van Hove tells a story from America, the story of an emancipation that begins in a model American town called Watertown. And of course it's not just about a woman and a man and an American town, but about the validity of the American Dream, the search for a free and tolerant society and – with a view to the present – not least the question of how the land of the free and the home of the brave will survive the attempt to make America great again. I Did It My Way features a top-class cast including acting superstar Lars Eidinger and Larissa Sirah Herden, who as singer, actress and music producer Lary is one of the great women of color in German-language pop music. In a series of co-productions that the Staatsoper Stuttgart is linking with other European festivals and theaters, this evening will also showcase new narrative styles, other musical languages and the many facets of what musical theater can be.

I Did It My Way

English, Czech, German, French, Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian, Italian, Greek and Turkish. These are the languages that will be sung in the premieres of the 2025/26 season. That’s quite a lot. But when you consider that people from more than 50 nations work at the Stuttgart State Theatres, that’s probably not even a fraction of the languages that are spoken here. Opera as a genre, on the other hand, has a world language in music with which it can communicate universally, directly and across language barriers. The opening concert with the State Orchestra, the State Opera Chorus, the ensemble and guests on the first day of the new season will focus on a wide variety of music from home. And the great thing is: when music, experiences and memories are shared, they become more, not less.

Music from home

Local zeitgeist meets classical high culture - you can be curious! This year, the HipHop Open Festival presents a unique event: "Opera meets HipHop". The event combines classical opera setting with modern hip-hop to create an innovative and rousing musical performance. The audience* will be taken on a musical journey that breaks the boundaries of genre and style. An event not to be missed!

EPSG:4326

Opera meets HipHop

The Staatstheater Stuttgart

Rigoletto wants to protect his daughter by all means from the advances of the hated, encroaching Duke - but in the end he is struck by the tragic realization that his revenge has failed most horribly: instead of the Duke, his own daughter has fallen victim to him. Tenor Kai Kluge makes his debut as the Duke of Mantua, while Beate Ritter once again takes on the role of Gilda after the acclaimed series in the 2018/19 season. Devid Cecconi sings the title role. The young, internationally acclaimed Italian-Turkish conductor Nil Venditti is at the podium of the Staatsorchester Stuttgart.

For one evening, the Pop Bureau makes the incredible range of the regional music scene tangible in the opera house. At live concerts of the current Pop fellows on the big stage in the opera house - the so-called Littmann Building - experimental sounds, moving rhythms and stirring basses shine in a new guise!

The Littmann-Sessions: A Pop Gala

Gangsta rap and a studio band on the opera stage? Are you kidding me? No, it's great! XATAR, German rapper, entrepreneur, publisher and producer, whose life story has just been filmed by director Fatih Akin under the title Rheingold, features the instrumental band Heavytones, well-known from many TV formats. Both acts share a great passion for jazz and, by their own admission, there was "quite a spark" at their first meeting.

XATAR feat. Heavytones

Not all great works are completed: in 1781, the year of the premiere of his Idomeneo , WA Mozart broke off work on his “serious German Singspiel” Zaide , the first attempt at an exoticizing “Turkish opera”, which was followed by the “ light-hearted” Abduction from the Seraglio . But what exactly does “the Turkish” want in it and where does it come from? (Certainly not from Turkey!) Director Jessica Glause uses the surviving Zaide material in Ludwigsburg's Schlosstheater to ask who actually formulates an “us and the others” against the backdrop of which tradition. The history of European musical theater is closely interwoven with the justifying legends of colonialism and racism, ie the arbitrary division of humanity into superior and inferior. Cultures represented as “foreign” through the supposedly neutral standard of the Central European lens have thus been projected into weak, sexualized female figures or despotic ragers again and again over four centuries.

Zaide

Ludwigsburg Palace

When the beach lies beneath the pavement, as it was often said in the past, it is not far to the sea. Gladis, the protagonist of this opera, follows the opposite direction, from the sea to the pavement. Gladis is an orca. And she wants to break what she breaks. Cruise ships, superyachts, that sort of thing. On her quest for revenge, she meets Lone, who promises her human form for 24 hours and demands one of her fins as a reward. On the pavement, she meets Abad and Ge, an urban guerrilla, schoolchildren on a museum visit to Stammheim. Gladis gets caught between the fronts and questions arise: Does the end justify the means? What remains when every truth is distorted? And if you can't fight violence peacefully, is militancy the last resort left to us all? But or because this is a fairy tale, the kiss of true love can free Gladis from everything in between.

Der Rote Wal

Attractive because repulsive - that’s one way to describe the contradictory fascination potential of William Shakespeare’s most enigmatic character, Othello. He probably could not have existed at the time of his creation: Black, a stranger, yet risen to the top of Venetian society through merit and spectacular eloquence, he marries the beautiful Desdemona.

Otello 

Youkali - this is the name of a fictitious island of the peaceful, where all the world's persecuted and displaced people could one day find refuge. A kind of utopia that Kurt Weill created in his 1934 chanson of the same name while fleeing from the National Socialists and which is the melancholy center of this special song recital.

Youkali

In 1930 Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht created a new type of grand opera, radical in both, entertainment as well as criticism. With the wit of an epic theater and the musical esprit of old and worn bar songs mixed with music of the avant-garde, Weill and Brecht built the fable of a city in paradise that finally perishes from its own utopias: in the end there is only one mortal sin left – the sin of insolvency. Together with a young ensemble, director Ulrike Schwab explores the one question: Who would still dare to dream of a better future today.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

The survival of the Holy Grail’s community is threatened by King Amfortas‘ wound which he received by the magician Klingsor. The only hope that the men have left now is the arrival of a so-called »innocent fool«, who has to become »knowledgeable by empathy«. Parsifal is the chosen one, but is unaware of his appointment as the redeemer of their plight. The seeress Kundry takes it upon her to show him his destiny.

Parsifal

Dora is in her mid-twenties and stuck in the sheltered surroundings of her family. Though she still has her whole life ahead of her, she suspects that the future has only the same old worn and well-known ideas to offer than before. Dora, the 21st century’s new heroine of opera, meets her present with total rejection and finds herself in aimless search for something different. Bernhard Lang's rhythm-driven music becomes Dora’s accomplice. In his opera about a longing for something radically new, Lang and librettist Frank Witzel playfully mix varying sounds from different musical epochs whilst laying tracks to centuries old characters, myths and stories.

Dora

Who has not heard of the robber Hotzenplotz? He first steals grandmother's new coffee grinder which plays such beautiful music whilst grinding. Then Hotzenplotz lures Seppel and Kasperl into a trap taking them both prisoners. What’s more, the villain then sells poor Kasperl to the great and evil magician Petrosilius Zwackelmann – or is it Seppel he is selling? It does not matter. In any case, it takes a fair amount of courage, magic and the combined help by the audience to rescue the two friends. Composer Sebastian Schwab has newly composed Otfried Preußler's enchanting story as a Singspiel for the ensemble of the Staatsoper Stuttgart in time for Preußler’s 100th birthday - with coffee mill and, of course, 7 knives.

No other version of the popular story where a mermaid falls in love with a human man and has to give up her form and herself for the love she craves, tells so beautifully of the two parallel worlds as Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka. And no one knows this world so well as the dazzling drag performers with whom director Bastian Kraft doubles Dvořák's forest and water creatures. They are experts in transformation and beautiful appearances in the spotlight. Through lip-synching, the drag performers make the fairy tale of mermaid and prince their own. Alongside a top-class ensemble of singers, they are on a quest for a life in which who we love and who we are no longer determines whose existence takes place in the light and whose is forced to take place in the dark.

Rusalka

A man in the midst of a personal crisis in his life: Gustav von Aschenbach is very successful professionally, but a vague sense of yearning drives him to search for something new and mysterious – he therefore decides to travel to Venice. In 1973 and based on a libretto by Myfanwy Piper, Benjamin Britten set to music author Thomas Mann‘s famous novella. Piper’s work has masterfully translated the storyline into theatrical images, and with his opera, the British composer surprised with a many-colored and exotic sounding work.

Death in Venice

Fyodor Dostoyevsky was certain that the secret to winning was surprisingly simple: “to control oneself every minute, regardless of the ups and downs of the game, and not to fall into passion.” Despite this knowledge, Dostoyevsky gambled away all his money and that of his lover at the roulette tables of German health resorts - gambling was forbidden elsewhere - which brought them both to the brink of destitution. Nevertheless, he capitalized on his experiences of loss: in 1866, he freed himself from an extortionate publishing contract with the novel The Gambler, which he wrote under great pressure. And on top of that, he delivered a study of his own (gambling) obsessions.

The Gambler

While La Bohème consists only of poetry and not of action, it is said that with Tosca it is the other way around: only action, no poetry. Even the librettist Giuseppe Giacosa considered Sardou's original completely unsuitable for an opera. “What made Puccini come to terms with such a real and dealing with a brutal subject whose actors are little more than puppets entangled in a highly intelligent, cleverly designed plot? ”asked the music critic Mosco Carner. Maybe just that? For over 20 years Willy Decker's classic production of Puccini's Sex and Crime masterpiece has been a repertory perennial.

Tosca

Fear of death - a bad advisor since time immemorial: King Idomeneo, whose fleet sinks into the waters of Crete shortly before returning home from the Trojan War, swears to the sea god Poseidon that if he survives, he will sacrifice the first human being he meets on the shore. But as fate – or rather the theater – would have it, this is of course his own son Idamante. To make matters worse, he has fallen in love with a Trojan prisoner, Ilia, which infuriates the Greek princess Elettra. Idomeneo, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s perfect "drama for music", is one of a series of Greek war dramas retold according to the taste of the 18th century.

Idomeneo

„As a stranger I arrived here“. Yes. But who is „I“? A lonesome wanderer about 200 years ago, who makes his way through a winter landscape after the dashing of his hopes in unrequited love? Franz Schubert’s „Winterreise“ is based upon poems by Wilhelm Müller and was composed in 1827 in a time following the years after Austrian State Chancellor Metternich’s conservative restorationist policy in 1815. A sense of collective resignation is very subtly expressed: as a private romantic drama. With his “compositorial interpretation” in 1993, Hans Zender attempted to make the force of the original composition perceptible again to a contemporary audience. In 2020, the Dutch video artist Aernout Mik takes it up by adding a further dimension. In his production, he focuses on the dissolution of the individual between the virtual and the real world which for Mik represents modern man’s “Winterreise”.

Schuberts "Winterreise“

A coming of age story and a story of love: The Queen of the Night persuades Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from captivity under the high priest Sarastro. Tamino, who instantly falls in love with Pamina, is ready to set off. Involuntarily, bird catcher Papageno is also sent along with Tamino - as companion to the prince. After various trials of initiation, courage and perseverance Tamino and Papageno not only find their station in life as adults, but also each the woman to their hearts' content: Tamino gains the hand of Pamina and Papageno lives happily ever after with his Papagena. We show the legendary Magic Flute of the Komische Oper Berlin, which director Barrie Kosky staged with the theater video art collective "1927" in an astonishing video animation world for the whole family.

The Austrian music band Franui sees itself as a "transformer station between classical and folk music, jazz and contemporary chamber music". In order to release that resulting energy in Stuttgart, Franui has taken on the greatest hits of the so-called "silver operetta" – those works whose composers were driven out of Germany by the National Socialists (Nazis). Experiences of exile and loss, dreams and hopes connect the fates of composers like Paul Abraham with the characters in Joseph Roth's novel Hotel Savoy. Displaced persons without hope or money, soldiers, evil profiteers, real and fake artists and prostitutes have taken up residence in the hotel and await the arrival of billionaire Bloomfield from America – as of the Messiah. But Bloomfield has something completely different in mind than saving the hotel or its illustrious guests ...

Hotel Savoy

Schauspiel Stuttgart

By the middle of the 19th Century, the figure of Salome, a woman who enforced her erotic desires by using lethal violence, had developed into both – incarnation of female ferocity and symbol for pure eroticism – in short to the most important Christian-mythological female figure within the world of music and literature. It resembles an ecstatic dance on the verge of a precipice which finally evolved into a symbol of decadence: Until today, the opera has not lost any of its equally fascinating and disturbing power.

Salome

"A scandal? No, joy. Exuberant joy," was the verdict of the Süddeutsche Zeitung after the Schwerin premiere of SANCTA. Florentina Holzinger's opera performance combines Paul Hindemith's one act opera Sancta Susanna with elements of the Catholic liturgy to create a new and radical vision of the Holy Mass ritual. Together with her performers, Holzinger embarks on spectacular physical borderline experiences and explores individual spirituality and faith, sexuality and pain, shame and liberation. 

Saint

Recreating reality is all well and good, according to Giuseppe Verdi, "but inventing reality is better, far better". And what sort of reality he invented in his Troubadour opera: Swapped children, avenged mothers, sacrificed lovers and more... An almost mythical tale full of unbelievable twists and turns that repeatedly put all the characters right into a state of emergency. Verdi was far more concerned with the credibility of the emotions and not so much with the credibility of the plot itself: Singing as a kind of utopia, as the opening of a space that does not exist in recreated reality. In his staging of Verdi's opera, director Paul-Georg Dittrich goes in search of exactly these moments.

Il Trovatore

Max, the hunter’s apprentice, has to land a direct hit at the upcoming shooting match in order to marry his beloved Agathe. Out of his fear of potential failure, Max gets involved with "dark forces" in the wolf’s canyon: Six sure-fire bullets for his sole use whilst the seventh bullet is reserved for the devil to strike any victim he chooses. Carl Maria von Weber‘s Freischütz, which premiered in 1821, is the epitome of a German romantic opera. Never before have occult, transcendental and supernatural ideas been transformed into music so full of suggestive sounds.

Der Freischütz

Gold or love? At the beginning of the tetralogy there is a momentous choice that, strictly speaking, is not a choice. Because Alberich is denied love, he renounces it forever and takes possession of the glittering raw material, which, forged into a ring, promises dominion over all creatures. With this cardinal error, Wagner sets his great world narrative in motion, in which others will also - even if briefly - exchange love for the prospect of gaining power, which sooner or later leads to collapse. Stephan Kimmig shows the mythical beginning as a sad, grotesque end-time game. Gods, giants and dwarves meet in the ruins of a night circus: a playground for exploring dizzying heights and fears of falling, but also a metaphor for a world stuck in a frantic standstill, where three Rhinemaidens of the post-millennial generation are undeterred in their search for ways into the future.

The Rheingold

In Brave New World in 1932, the loyal Freudian Aldous Huxley had one of his characters describe families as turbo-incubators of human neuroses, in whose warm, humid climate one could only go crazy. In the case of the Atride family, whose psychosocial abnormalities were addressed by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal in 1909, one generation hands the ax to the next: Clytemnestra avenges the sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia on her husband Agamemnon, Elektra uses her brother Orestes to murder her the mother and her lover Aegisthus, only sister Chrysothemis longs for home and hearth. Peter Konwitschny lets the children watch the patricide in the bathtub. But the retribution will be anything but liberation.

Electra

A material that is as popular as it is ambivalent and evokes countless associations with one word: Casanova! Just one day after Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill had launched probably the theater sensation of the Weimar Republic with the Threepenny Opera in what would later become the Berliner Ensemble, director and choreographer Erik Charell followed suit right next door in the predecessor of the Friedrichstadtpalast. The capital’s press was enthusiastic: “Casanova is a great success. It means the resurrection of the operetta!” (Der Montag). The “electrifying music of Johann Strauss” (Berliner Tageblatt) was not only rearranged by Ralph Benatzky, but also electrified – by “the new instrument vibraphone”, as announced in the program booklet for the premiere.

In Shakespeare’s drama Sir John Falstaff, an aristocratic crook, loses his way and finds himself in Windsor – amongst hard-working citizens, who are now forced to defend everything they have worked for and have earned against Falstaff, that uninvited guest: their money, their children, their wives. Windsor’s women and children, however, have minds of their own and know very well how to help themselves.

Half a century after his first success with Nabucco, 80-year-old Giuseppe Verdi concludes his life’s work with one of world literature’s best musical comedies ever.

Staatsoper Stuttgart

16 - 17 Jul, 2026

The Little Witch

Jul 13, 2026

The Littmann-Sessions: a pop gala

Articles & News

Staatsoper Stuttgart