Season Overview 2024/25 - Deutsche Oper Berlin
Season 24/25
Attraction is what our music theatre wants to exert on you and what we would like to offer you for the last season of Dietmar Schwarz's directorship. An attraction that will make you curious about our opera and concert programme, but also about the world premieres in the main auditorium and the Tischlerei. We invite you to feel drawn to the perspectives of our directors and the interpretations of our artists. We look forward to the new season together with you!
Welcome
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Season preview book 24/25
Read all about the premieres - LA FIAMMA, MACBETH, DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN, LASH, RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY and concert performances of WERTHER at the main auditorium and in the Tischlerei IMMMERMEEEHR, AB IN DEN RING!, NEW SCENES VII and WAGNER WORLDWIDE. We also present essays and talks by, with and about Sir Donald Runnicles, Jörg Königsdorf, Ottorino Respighi, Carlo Rizzi, Franziska Seeberg, Maria Milisavljević, Gordon Kampe, Christian Lindhorst as well as Asal and Nuran, Marie-Ève Signeyrole, Ulrike Baureithel, Dietmar Schwarz, Tobias Kratzer, Rebecca Saunders, Benedikt von Peter and Jonathan Tetelman. You will find dates, highlights and casts of the main roles for all our 45 repertoire productions from John Adams to Alexander von Zemlinsky and, of course, information about our concerts.
All music theatre productions at a glance
Repertoire overview 24/25
Scroll and click your way through our six premieres in the main theatre, the world premieres and performances in the Tischlerei and our numerous repertoire productions from A for AIDA, ANDREA CHENIER, ANTIKRIST or ARABELLA to TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, TURANDOT, WAGNER WORLDWIDE, WERTHER [concertante] and WRITTEN ON SKIN. Over the course of the season, we present staged realisations of works by Adam, Beethoven, Benjamin, Bizet, Donizetti, Giordano, Humperdinck, Janáček, Kampe, Langgaard, Massenet, Mozart, Puccini, Ravel, Rossini, Saunders, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Wagner, Weill and Zemlinsky.
Cheaper already in advance booking
Deutsche Oper Card, generational performances, early booking discount or Christmas special
Regular advance booking begins on 2 May and offers an early booking discount of 10% for all performances on the main stage up to and including 31 May. The Deutsche Oper Card offers a 30% discount for two tickets throughout the season (one-off cost: 75.00 euros). Excluded from the discounts are performances in the foyer and the Tischlerei, children's performances at standard prices, performances by the Staatsballett Berlin, external and special events and the Festive Opera Night. With our generational performances, we invite young and old to our theatre 18 times at a special price. Our new Christmas special for everyone up to the age of 18: HÄNSEL UND GRETEL, THE CUNNING LITTLE VIXEN, THE MAGIC FLUTE and IL VIAGGIO A REIMS between 13 December 2024 and 5 January 2025 at a reduced price of € 10.00 for everyone up to the age of 18.
Richard Strauss
The conclusion of the Strauss cycle by Sir Donald Runnicles and Tobias Kratzer with DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN (THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW) not only provides an impetus to present the first two parts once again with ARABELLA and INTERMEZZO, but also to offer two further Strauss masterpieces in exemplary interpretations with Claus Guth's reading of SALOME (in the photo) and Kirsten Harms' concentrated production of ELEKTRA. A children's concert on the theme of "Till Eulenspiegel" and a symphony concert conducted by Lorenzo Viotti complete the homage.
Our next premieres, major concerts and highlights 24/25
Richard Wagner
Ever since the Deutsche Oper Berlin was founded, Wagner's works have played a central role in the theatre's repertoire. This season also offers the opportunity to immerse yourself in the world of Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk in five productions - with the three romantic operas DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER, TANNHÄUSER and LOHENGRIN (in the photo), TRISTAN UND ISOLDE and MEISTERSINGER, which are characterised by a reflection on German identity despite the joy of performance.
Premiere on 29 September 2024, 6.00 pm
La fiamma
Impressive songs and colossal tableaux accompany a story of intrigue, power struggles and an affair between stepmother and son in Ottorino Respighi's last great opera. Surrounded by political battles, the characters become entangled in personal conflicts that mercilessly lead to catastrophe and end with a cruel outcome at the stake ... Conductor: Carlo Rizzi; Director: Christof Loy; With Olesya Golovneva, Georgy Vasiliev, Ivan Inverardi, Martina Serafin, Doris Soffel and others.
Premiere on 23 November 2024, 6.00 pm
Macbeth
With MACBETH, Verdi set a drama by Shakespeare to music for the first time in 1847. Although he studied Shakespeare throughout his life, he did not devote himself to other dramas by the English national poet until he was very old. On the other hand, the setting of this dark story about nebulous prophecies and bloody power struggles for the Scottish royal house falls into that enormously productive decade which the composer himself described as his "galley years" ... Conductor: Enrique Mazzola; Staging: Marie-Ève Signeyrole; With Roman Burdenko / Thomas Lehman, Marko Mimica / Byung Gil Kim, Felicia Moore, Attilio Glaser / Andrei Danilov and others
Premiere on 26 January 2025, 5.00 pm
Die Frau ohne Schatten
Hofmannsthal wrote to Strauss in 1911 that the new opera was to ZAUBERFLÖTE as the ROSENKAVALIER was to FIGARO. And indeed, much in this work is reminiscent of Mozart's "grand opera": the encounter between different social classes, the fairytale-like plot charged with high symbolic value, but above all the awareness of an elementary turning point in time that calls the previous order into question. And here, as there, realisation is only achieved through difficult trials ... Conductor: Sir Donald Runnicles; Director: Tobias Kratzer; With David Butt Philip, Jane Archibald, Marina Prudenskaya, Jordan Shanahan, Catherine Foster and others.
World premiere on 20 June 2025, 6.00 pm
Lash
With LASH, the acclaimed German-British composer Rebecca Saunders writes her first opera and, based on the visually powerful texts by video artist and writer Ed Atkins, creates a work about the existential fundamental experiences of the human body with which we are in the world and at the same time experience and understand it ... Conductor: Enno Poppe; Director: Dead Centre; With Anna Prohaska, Sarah Maria Sun, Noa Frenkel, Katja Kolm
Premiere on 17 July 2025, 8.00 pm
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Benedikt von Peter's production brings the RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY to life: not only the stage but also the foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin are used, the audience is part of a huge entertainment machine that inexorably tips over into an apocalyptic game ... Conductor: Stefan Klingele; Director: Benedikt von Peter; With Evelyn Herlitzius, Thomas Cilluffo, Markus Brück, Annette Dasch, Nikolai Schukoff and others.
Premiere on 23 July 2025, 7.30 pm
Werther (concert version)
Concert performances of WERTHER at the Deutsche Oper Berlin have often offered the opportunity to experience the great tenors of their time in the role of the suicidal poet. Following Alfredo Kraus in 1998 and Vittorio Grigolo in 2014, this time it is the turn of the US-American Jonathan Tetelman, who has already introduced himself to Berlin audiences in IL TRITTICO, TOSCA and FRANCESCA DA RIMINI. At his side, Aigul Akhmetshina, one of the most exciting female singer discoveries of recent years, sings the role of Charlotte ... Conductor: Enrique Mazzola; With Jonathan Tetelman, Aigul Akhmetshina, Dean Murphy, Lilit Davtyan, Michael Bachtadze, Chance Jonas-O'Toole, Gerard Farreras and others.
Giuseppe Verdi
Verdi gained his fame as a "political" composer with his first international success NABUCCO, but the exercise of power and its significance for the fate of the individual also play a central role in his later operas. With NABUCCO, LES VÊPRES SICILIENNES, DON CARLO and AIDA, the Deutsche Oper Berlin is bringing together four works by the political Verdi in May. And in addition to the new production of MACBETH, this season's programme naturally also includes repertoire classics RIGOLETTO and LA TRAVIATA are also on the programme this season.
Topics
LA FIAMMA - Premiere on 29 September 2024
The Sum of his Creativity
Ottorino Respighi was one of Italy’s greatest composers of instrumental music. However, he also wrote monumental operas. Finally, we can experience his greatest work, LA FIAMMA ... In the production by Christof Loy (DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE, FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, DER SCHATZGRÄBER) and under the musical direction of Carlo Rizzi, the cast includes Olesya Golovneva, Georgy Vasiliev, Vladislav Sulimsky, Martina Serafin and Doris Soffel.
LA FIAMMA - Premiere on 29 September 2024
Carlo Rizzi on a masterpiece of verismo
"I consider it a wonderful stroke of good fortune to be able to conduct this great work with the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. To my ears, the warm, voluminous, homogeneous sound of this orchestra, steeped as it is in Wagner and Strauss, is a perfect fit for the opulence of an opera such as LA FIAMMA. Therefore, I look forward all the more to finally bringing Respighi’s last grand opera to the stage" - says Italian conductor Carlo Rizzi. Experience LA FIAMMA from 29 September 2024.
MACBETH – Premiere on 23 November 2024
The Realist
Marie-Ève Signeyrole is the shooting star of European musical theatre. Signeyrole’s productions are intensely topical. So keenly do they explore the complexity of life, love and actions in a world riven by war, displacement and climate change that true life and staged reality can end up mirroring each other. She’s now turning her attention to Verdi’s MACBETH. Under the direction of Enrique Mazzola, Roman Burdenko / Thomas Lehman, Marko Mimica / Byung Gil Kim and Anastasia Bartoli / Felicia Moore, among others, will sing and perform.
A look back to the future
He brought in theatre directors to do opera, put forgotten works from the 1920s – Korngold, Langgaard, Schreker – back on the programme and presided over new stagings of grand opéras by Giacomo Meyerbeer. He set a record for brand-new commissions, with nigh on one world premiere every year. A tour of Dietmar Schwarz’s twelve years as Artistic Director.
DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN – Premiere on 26 January 2025
Mother (and womb) for hire
In THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW Richard Strauss explores the tension caused by a childless marriage. Tobias Kratzer brings the material up-to-date and discusses the protagonists’ attempt to buy happiness at other people’s expense. Ulrike Baureithel, who wrote an essay on this topic for us, is a freelance journalist, copy editor, lecturer, co-founder of the weekly newspaper »Freitag« and a researcher into issues relating to ovum donation and surrogate motherhood.
LASH - World premiere on 20 June 2025
How do you create an opera?
At the end of our interview, Rebecca Saunders bends over the piano and the score. The notes are written in pencil, her first opera not yet complete. “See here, the actress recites the lines very precisely but then she goes back to singing. I put her in the bass clef because she has such a deep voice.” Saunders is talking about Katja Kolm, who will appear first. Saunders also frequently discusses the three female singers as though they were solo instruments: the alto of Noa Frenkel, the coloratura soprano Anna Prohaska, the soprano of Sarah Maria Sun. She keeps the particular strengths of these individual performers in mind when composing.
RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY – Premiere on 17 July 2025
In Mahagonny anything goes
Benedikt von Peters' production of the three-act play RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht completely dissolves the separation between stage and auditorium - and thus also breaks the boundaries of the usual operation. Brecht's town founders Leokadja Begbick, Prokurist Fatty and Dreieinigkeitsmoses, for example, will move through the lower foyer for long stretches - and the audience with them - while the orchestra plays on stage.
Tischlerei - Space for new music theatre and concert
The Tischlerei was formerly a workshop, today it is a space for experiments and installations, for world premieres and play developments. It is the home of our Junge Deutsche Oper, which fills this space with life through children's music theatre, large participatory projects and concerts. And it is the space for our musicians, who invite the audience to extraordinary programmes in chamber and jazz concerts.
Premieres and concerts in the Tischlerei
World premiere on 16 November 2024
immmermeeehr
The stress starts on the way to school. You're late, nobody wants to sit next to you. The others laugh at you and you are bullied because of your clothes ... The planned world premiere of IMMMERMEEEHR by composer Gordon Kampe and librettist Maria Milisavljević is a musical theatre work by and for children aged eight and over. The main roles in the piece are played by the children's chorus and five child soloists from the children's chorus ... Conductor: Christian Lindhorst; Director: Franziska Seeberg
World premiere on 28 February 2025
Ab in den Ring!
The ghosts of King Gunther, Siegfried and Brünhilde are up to mischief in a place that is commonly known as a stage-set fundus. Wagner's children will do anything to win the audience's heart! Day in, day out, intrigue, murder and manslaughter, one drama follows the next. It's time for a good sweep - and with humour! ... Artistic direction: tutti d*amore - Berlin collective for contemporary operetta; Conductor: Elda Laro; With Caroline Schnitzer, Ferdinand Keller, Ludwig Obst (tutti d*amore) and members of the ensemble.
World premiere on 27 April 2025
New Scenes VII
The competition, organised as a collaboration between Deutsche Oper and the Hanns Eisler School of Music, was and is primarily intended as a laboratory for the future. It is explicitly aimed at teams of composers and authors. The three new music theatre works of around 30 minutes in length will be created with students from the Hanns Eisler School of Music, who will perform them on stage by directing, playing and singing ... Work 1: Chamber opera by Haukur þór Harðarson with a libretto by Sophie Fetokaki; Work 2: Chamber opera by Zara Ali with a libretto by Hannah Dübgen; Work 3: Chamber opera by Huihui Cheng with a libretto by Giuliana Kiersz
Premiere on 13 June 2025
Wagner worldwide
"Wagner Worldwide" is a multi-perspective music theatre production for one singer and a scalable orchestra, in which global networks and personal emotional entanglements with political events come together in one place: the evening news studio. "Wagner Worldwide" brings to the stage how the activities of the internationally active paramilitary Russian mercenary group Wagner are connected to the mythologies staged by Richard Wagner.
IMMMERMEEEHR - world premiere on 16 November 2024
Children write opera
Gordon Kampe and Maria Milisavljević create music theatre for children aged eight and up. The main roles are played by the children's chorus and five child soloists from its ranks, complemented by four adult solos and seven musicians. With this world premiere, we are continuing our successful work on building up a repertoire in the field of music theatre for children and young people. The result is a piece in which, in a professional, contemporary production, children sing and act on stage for children of the same age in the audience in a play whose content was developed in a participatory process together with the director Franziska Seeberg.
Ab in den Ring! - World premiere on 28 February 2025
Wagner fresh on the table
The collective tutti d*amore consists of a director, a mezzo-soprano and two tenors. The name is a nod to the Italian operatic tradition, but in a clichéd way: it is untranslatable, the kind of rubbish Italian that sometimes occurs in the German version of Italo pop. The "Amore", or love of music, takes centre stage and they have agreed on certain goals in their six-year collaboration: Oper*etta for everyone is their motto. And they want it to be colourful, wild and highly professional ... tutti d*amore put their own spin on Oscar Straus' DIE LUSTIGEN NIBELUNGEN - and create an operetta spectacle.
NEW SCENES VII - World premieres on 27 April 2025
Kickstarter for musical theatre
NEUEN SZENEN has been bringing young teams to the Tischlerei for more than ten years. Three creative minds look back: composer Sara Gloinarić, director Michael Höppner and librettist Fanny Sorgo. From 27 April 2025, the seventh version of this international composition competition will take place, in which a brand new chamber opera triptych will once again see the light of day.
