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Schedule - Deutsche Oper Berlin

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Opening night

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Kurt Weill [1900 – 1950]

17
Thursday
July
20:00 - 22:15
€ 64,00 / reduced € 32,00
Buy tickets
RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY in Benedikt von Peter's production will take place in the foyers and on the stage - guests can move freely between the venues and video screens. There will be free choice of seating, including on mattresses.
Information about the work

Opera in 3 acts by Kurt Weill
Libretto by Bertolt Brecht
First performance on 9th March, 1930 in Leipzig
Premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 17th July 2025

2 hrs 15 mins / no interval

In German with German and English surtitles

45 minutes before beginning: Introduction (in German language)

recommended from 15 years
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Cast
Our thanks to our partners

Presented by radio3 vom rbb and taz.

17
Thursday
July
20:00 - 22:15
€ 64,00 / reduced € 32,00
Buy tickets
RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY in Benedikt von Peter's production will take place in the foyers and on the stage - guests can move freely between the venues and video screens. There will be free choice of seating, including on mattresses.
Cast
the content

About the work
Everything begins with the foundation of a city. Less the fruit of an ideal than the result of zero prospects in life, the city is conceived by the widowed Begbick, Fatty and Trinity Moses as a place that will make them money. Aiming to come out ahead financially for once, they plan to out-fox a system designed to suck them dry. To this end they name their city »Mahagonny, the City of Nets«. Yet the system defies their attempts to out-wit it; the nets net nothing. The people flocking to Mahagonny bring discontent rather than money – first and foremost Jimmy Mahoney, who grimly concludes: »But something’s missing«.

Underpinning Bertolt Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s »didactic work« is a deep disillusionment. The atmosphere of the piece is summed up in the song »We lost our big old mama«. The protagonists aim to fail as a team in their radical and nihilistic project: stuffing their faces and boozing, shagging and brawling till they drop. Only to Jimmy Mahoney is it given to ponder on existential matters, grappling with the key issues of our age: How do we want to live? And: what is community?

About the production
Benedikt von Peter’s production makes RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY an up-close and personal experience. The action extends from the stage to the foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and all points in between. The audience become part of a 3-dimensional entertainment construct that is inexorably morphing into an apocalyptic game.

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In Mahagonny anything goes
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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.