For the 23/24 season, we are focusing on the human being. At the threshold of fiction and reality, we appeal to the individual's power of judgement with questions about the challenges facing humanity.
Welcome
Upcoming highlights and premieres
Enjoy reading!
Season preview 23/24
Read all about the premieres - IL TRITTICO, ANNA BOLENA, WRITTEN ON SKIN, PIQUE DAME, INTERMEZZO and NIXON IN CHINA in the big house as well as in the Tischlerei ZEROTH LAW, BETA and FRANK / FRANK / EHNES / ASCHENBRENNER [AT]. We also present essays and talks by, with and about Pınar Karabulut, Gamut Inc, Enrique Mazzola and David Alden, George Benjamin, Katie Mitchell and Martin Crimp, Christiane Mudra, Sam Brown, Thomas Johannes Mayer and Robert Pfaller, Barbara Ehnes as well as John Adams. Dates, highlights and castings of principal roles can be found for all our 35 repertoire productions from Bach to Wagner and of course information on our concerts.
Seating Plan, Ticket Prices and Discounts 23/24
Do you know about our generational performances, our Deutsche Oper Card and, for the first time, the early booking discount? Read on!
The regular advance booking period begins on 3 May and for the first time offers an early bird discount of 10% until 31 May for all performances in price categories A to E and S. As a holder of the Deutsche Oper Card 23/24 (one-off € 75.00) or a member of the Förderkreis, you can book your tickets as early as 5 April. From the 23/24 season onwards, the Deutsche Oper Card grants you a 30% discount for 2 tickets per performance in price categories A to E and S. In the next season, we will be offering the popular opera experiences for young and old at a special price with the 36 generational performances.
All music theatre productions at a glance
Repertoire overview 23/24
Scroll and click through our six premieres in the big house, the world premieres and performances in the Tischlerei, and our 35 repertory productions from A for AIDA, ANNA BOLENA and ANTIKRIST to TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, TURANDOT, WRITTEN ON SKIN or ZEROTH LAW. In the course of the season we present staged realisations of works by Adam, Bach, Battistelli, Beethoven, Benjamin, Bizet, Donizetti, Humperdinck, Langgaard, Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Mozart, Puccini, Rossini, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi and all the ten Bayreuth works by Richard Wagner.
What can the opera achieve?
In their opera WRITTEN ON SKIN, composer George Benjamin and his librettist Martin Crimp leap boldly through time. From a present that is both mundane and downright provocative, three angels conjure up a gruesome history that took place around 800 years ago. As timeless creatures, the angels slip into the story’s characters, which in turn gives rise once again to an artful game of an intrinsic narrative. This superimposition of time domains is the most recent example of how operas can repeatedly embrace the ideas of any era and turn them into something that is both new and independent. This is similar to what happens in Polish Nobel prize laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s novel »House of Day, House of Night«, in which the narrative cuts back from the setting of a Silesian village in the nineties to the story of a medieval saint. Reality and imagination thus seem to merge with each other throughout the story. The works of Tokarczuk and Benjamin/Crimp bring out the archaic and the immutable, while detaching the same from fashions and passing fads.
Premiere on 30 September 2023
Il trittico
For his cycle IL TRITTICO, which premiered in 1918, Giacomo Puccini composed three scores that once again bundle what Italian opera could be in those years. His triptych lives from contrasts and reflections between the pieces and ultimately revolves around a single motif: death as the central point of reference in life ... Conductor: John Fiore [30 Sept; 2 Oct; Dec] / Sir Donald Runnicles; Production: Pınar Karabulut; With Misha Kiria, Jonathan Tetelman / Mikhail Pirogov, Carmen Giannattasio / Maria Motolygina, Mané Galoyan / Elisa Verzier, Violeta Urmana / Annika Schlicht, Andrei Danilov a. o.
Premiere on 15 December 2023
Anna Bolena
Donizetti tells the tragic fate of Henry VIII's unhappy second wife, who ends up under the executioner's axe, with unadorned clarity. And especially in the drawing of the title character, he succeeds in placing virtuoso vocal technique entirely at the service of highly romantic emotional expression ... Conductor: Enrique Mazzola / Daniele Squeo (March); Production: David Alden; With Riccardo Fassi, Federica Lombardi, Vasilisa Berzhanskaya / Jana Kurucová, Padraic Rowan, René Barbera / Xabier Anduaga, Karis Tucker / Arianna Manganello a. o.
Premiere on 27 January 2024
Written on Skin
Based on a text from medieval sources, author Martin Crimp, composer George Benjamin and director Katie Mitchell succeeded with WRITTEN ON SKIN 2012 in creating a sensational parable about identity, love and the power of literature and art ... Conductor: Marc Albrecht; Director: Katie Mitchell; With Mark Stone, Vera-Lotte Boecker, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, Irene Roberts, Chance Jonas-O'Toole a. o.
Premiere on 9 March 2024
Pikowaja Dama - Pique Dame
Tchaikovsky's second most popular opera today, after EUGEN ONEGIN, inspires above all through its sheer size: in PIQUE DAME the mood skilfully changes from large, representative choral and ensemble opera to psychological chamber play scenes. The glamour of a sophisticated elite meets the misery of the proletariat ... Conductor: Sebastian Weigle; Director: Sam Brown; With Martin Muehle, Sondra Radvanovsky, Hanna Schwarz, Lucio Gallo, Thomas Lehman / Philipp Jekal, Annika Schlicht / Karis Tucker a. o.
Premiere on 25 April 2024
Intermezzo
New opera material for a new time - this was not only sought by the avant-gardists in the 1920s. Old master Richard Strauss went even further and brought not only a story from the modern world, but also, barely veiled, his own married life to the stage ... Conductor: Sir Donald Runnicles / Dominic Limburg; Production: Tobias Kratzer; With Thomas Johannes Mayer, Maria Bengtsson / Flurina Stucki, Thomas Blondelle a. o.
Premiere on 22 June 2024
Nixon in China
Two of the most powerful men in the world shake hands - and the world observes: With their opera about the state visit of American President Richard Nixon to Mao Tse-tung in 1972, composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman brought contemporary history to the stage ... Conductor: Daniel Carter; Production: Hauen und Stechen; With Kyle Miller, Thomas Lehman, Thomas Lehman, Ya-Chung Huang, Heidi Stober, Hye-Young Moon a. o.Our video recommendations
Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold, on 11, 21, 28 May 2024
Richard Wagner: Die Walküre, on 12, 22, 29 May 2024
Richard Wagner: Siegfried, on 18, 24, 31 May 2024
Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung, on 20, 26 May; 2 June 2024
video - 03:06 min.
Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold, on 11, 21 ...
video - 02:56 min.
Richard Wagner: Die Walküre, on 12, 22 ...
video - 02:30 min.
Richard Wagner: Siegfried, on 18, 24, 31 ...
video - 02:59 min.
Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung, on 20 ...
Topics
IL TRITTICO - from 30 September 2023
The Pink Power for Puccini
Do you remember? In GREEK, Pınar Karabulut sent blue centaurs across our parking deck. Now the director is staging her first opera on the main stage with Puccini's IL TRITTICO. It will be colourful: a chapel will look like Berghain, the Seine is a pool of water, nuns will not wear black and white but look futuristic, "it will be a bit crazy," says Pınar Karabulut and laughs.
The Ten Canonical Operas
The Bayreuth Wagner
With DER FLIEGENDEN HOLLÄNDER, first performed in 1841, Richard Wagner found his own unmistakable musical language and with this opera begins the canon of ten works performed at the Bayreuth Festival. The Deutsche Oper Berlin is presenting the entire Bayreuth Wagner this season: DER FLIEGENDE HOLLÄNDER, TANNHÄUSER, LOHENGRIN, DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, TRISTAN UND ISOLDE, DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG and PARSIFAL (in the photo).
ANNA BOLENA - from 15 December 2023
Die Hard, Anna
Since Shakespeare, the English crown has been the epitome of all royalty, and no monarchy has been the subject of so many stories of blood and passion, perfidy, lust for power and renunciation. Probably no composer brought the power of fascination of the "Royals" to the opera stage more effectively than Gaetano Donizetti. Enrique Mazzola and David Alden stage ANNA BOLENA, Donizetti's bel canto masterpiece. A conversation about violence, powerlessness and probably the longest final aria in the opera world.
WRITTEN ON SKIN – from 27 January 2024
A momentous affair
It was the second collaboration between Crimp and Benjamin and only the composer's second opera. WRITTEN ON SKIN became a worldwide success from a standing start. Now the celebrated production is coming to Berlin. Based on a text from medieval sources, author Martin Crimp, composer George Benjamin and director Katie Mitchell succeeded with WRITTEN ON SKIN 2012 in creating a sensational parable about identity, love and the power of literature and art.
PIQUE DAME - 9 March 2024
In the spirit of friendship
Sam Brown hesitated when the request reached him to take over Graham Vick's production of Tchaikovsky's PIQUE DAME, the last production Vick worked on. The premiere was supposed to have taken place in spring 2020, but then the pandemic hit and everything was postponed. Finally, Vick himself fell ill with covid - and tragically died. This was to be his fifth production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The British Sam Brown is now bringing his friend's work to a conclusion.
INTERMEZZO - from 25 April 2024
The seven paths to marital bliss
INTERMEZZO provides unexpectedly private insights into the ups and downs of the Strauss couple. In it, Thomas Johannes Mayer sings the court conductor Storch. We take this as an opportunity to ask him about the secrets of a marriage that keeps its promises.
INTERMEZZO - from 25 April 2024
The private domain is musical
With INTERMEZZO, Strauss brought the lowlands of bourgeois marriage onto the opera stage for the first time. Philosopher Robert Pfaller takes this as an opportunity to reflect on the relationship between public and private in art.
NIXON IN CHINA - from 22 June 2024
Who’s conducting whom here?
Two of the most powerful men in the world shake hands - and the world watches: with their opera about the state visit of American President Richard Nixon to Mao Tse-tung in 1972, composer John Adams and librettist Alice Goodman brought contemporary history to the stage. 36 years after its premiere, the opera is being seen in Berlin for the first time - and it seems more topical than ever.
NIXON IN CHINA - from 22 June 2024
His big occasion
Whoever creates the images dictates the opinion. Richard Nixon's state visit to communist China was a major event that changed political reporting. Instead of politics, there were petitessen. Instead of treaties: Photo ops. The constant fire of staging is still in use today.
Departing into the open
Between pop and avant-garde, independent scene and institution: since 2012, the Tischlerei has been the place for new formats and shows what music theatre can be today. Whether political, participatory, documentary or glamorous - something new is guaranteed to take place here. Let us surprise you! Premieres, concerts, revivals in the Tischlerei
ZEROTH LAW – from 27 September 2023
Ghosts in the machine
How do we ensure that an artificial intelligence subordinates itself to us humans? In 1942, Isaac Asimov thought about the coexistence of robots and humans. If, in a distant future, machines existed that could find solutions on their own, they would also be able to turn against us. He formulated three laws that restrict the actions of robots for the protection of humans and placed the zeroth law first and foremost: robots must place the good of humanity above that of the individual. In Gamut Inc's ZEROTH LAW, human voices meet machine music as a robot orchestra joins the RIAS Kammerchor live on stage.
World premiere on 17 February 2024
Beta
Technical innovations have long since permeated all areas of life. The world premiere BETA illuminates the potential of digital tools, but also the risks posed by non-transparent data sets and the monetisation of private user data. In her composition, Dariya Maminova artfully interweaves genres, mixes live sound with complex electronics and repeatedly plays with the boundaries of our perception of analogue and digitally produced music.
BETA – from 17 February 2024
Who will watch the watchmen?
Author and director Christiane Mudra transposes long-term research to the stage in an exciting evening of musical theatre. BETA, a work produced jointly with composer Dariya Maminova, explores the power of technological giants.
World premiere on 27 September 2023
