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Schedule - Deutsche Oper Berlin

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Rigoletto

Giuseppe Verdi (1813 – 1901)

10
Friday
January
19:30 - 22:15
C prices: € 108.00 / 90.00 / 64.00 / 40.00 / 26.00
Buy tickets
Information about the work

Melodramma in 3 acts
Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave
First performed on 11th March 1851 in Venice
Premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 21. April 2013

2 hrs 45 mins / 1 interval

In Italian with German and English surtitles

Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance

recommended from 14 years
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Cast
Our thanks to our partners

Supported by Förderkreis der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V.

10
Friday
January
19:30 - 22:15
C prices: € 108.00 / 90.00 / 64.00 / 40.00 / 26.00
Buy tickets
Cast
the content

About the work
“As for the effect that a work has as a piece of theatre, I’d say that RIGOLETTO is the best material that I’ve ever set to music […]. It has very powerful scenes, there’s temperament, pathos, a lot of variety.” [Verdi to Antonio Somma, 22nd April 1853]

In describing the attributes of his 1851 melodrama based on Victor Hugo’s acclaimed play “Le roi s’amuse” Verdi also puts his finger on the challenges that any director has to address: RIGOLETTO is namely a masterpiece whose particularity lies in the clash between the characters’ psychology and the improbable action of a fantasy storyline.

It’s a tale that smacks of gothic horror. In his role as court jester to the Duke of Mantua, the hunchbacked Rigoletto is despised by the collected courtiers and in return makes fun of all the men whose wives have been ravished by his boss, a notorious womaniser. So nervous is he that his own daughter, Gilda, might fall victim to the Duke that he conceals her very existence. Finally Rigoletto realises that his attempt to preserve the cocoon of his family life is doomed to fail in this environment of wanton violence. Gilda is seduced too by the Duke, even laying down her life for him.

It is Verdi’s music that gives the story its emotional credibility and makes RIGOLETTO a tragedy that unfurls as a result of the interaction of three very different people – the Duke, a rake for whom Verdi wrote such seductive music that Gilda and the audience alike are swept up in his aura; Rigoletto, one of those typical Verdi creations who have good and bad sides to them; and finally Gilda, a pristine personification of innocence and sympathy. In RIGOLETTO we identify especially with these three people and come to view even the craziest chance incidents as the characters’ inescapable destiny.


About the production
In his first opera production in Berlin, Jan Bosse too was attracted by this exploitation of musical theatre to maximum effect. In his production Bosse transforms the auditorium of the Deutsche Oper into the Court of Mantua and the under-stage trap room into the hiding place used by Gilda, the daughter of Rigoletto the jester. Rigoletto’s efforts to keep his private life separate from his job in the service of a corrupt regime are futile, however, and his world gradually collapses into its component parts. In the end, with his daughter dead and all his plans dashed, Rigoletto is left, literally, with nothing.

Our recommendations

Macbeth
Nabucco
Don Carlo
La traviata
Les Vêpres Siciliennes
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07
DEC

Adventsverlosung: Das 7. Fensterchen

Today we are giving away an unforgettable family Christmas classic: Engelbert Humperdinck's HÄNSEL UND GRETEL on 26 December 2024 at 2:00 p.m. for four people. If you would like to take part in the draw for four tickets, please send an e-mail to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de today with the subject line ‘The 7th window’.

Although HÄNSEL UND GRETEL is actually set in spring – it's strawberry season –, this opera is a Christmas classic for young and old alike. And so Humperdinck's ‘children's Christmas pageant’ is once again scheduled this December in Andreas Homoki's imaginative production: are they naughty or just playful, the two children Hansel and Gretel? In any case, the broom they are supposed to bind breaks, the stocking that is already half-knitted dissolves into squiggly yarn. And then the milk pot falls to the floor. So the mother sends the two children into the forest to collect strawberries. Unexpectedly, they escape the confines and poverty of the broom-maker's house and find themselves in an enchanted forest that transforms everything instantly: their clothes are suddenly much more colourful, birds sing sweetly in the iridescent light, strawberries and flowers grow in abundance, lovable clowns rock them to gentle dreams... If only the witch weren't there.

For over 100 years, Humperdinck's HÄNSEL UND GRETEL has been one of the most popular operas for the whole family. Andreas Homoki tells the story in a child-friendly and straightforward way. Together with his set and costume designer Wolfgang Gussmann, he counteracts the opulence of the music with a lightness and poetic imagery that reaches its magical climax in the night scenes in the forest.



Closing date: 7 December 2024. The winners will be informed by email on 9 December 2024. The tickets will be sent to you as Ticketdirect. No right of appeal to the courts.