Welcome

Dear Opera Lovers,

Dear Opera Lovers,

Were you to ask me what gives me joy as artistic director, my answer would perhaps not sound very inventive: like all the people working in this opera house on and behind the stage, I long for modern, powerful performances for an enthusiastic audience comprising all generations and social strata. After all, it’s not only important for us to produce good art, but also to ensure that this art reaches as many as possible. We want everyone to feel invited, and this makes us continuously question the manner we make contact with you: because many – not only younger – people get their information via social media today, we keep expanding our activities in this area. This year's preview also responds to the fact that many of you are now deciding to buy tickets at shorter notice: here, you will find everything that is important this season – further and more detailed information can then be found in our monthly magazine «Libretto”, but also in our newsletters and on our website.
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Upcoming highlights and premieres
Premieres 23/24 in the calendar
Season preview 23/24
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.
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Do you know about our generational performances, our Deutsche Oper Card and, for the first time, the early booking discount? Read on!
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.
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Repertoire overview 23/24
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.
Repertoire overview
What can the opera achieve?

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.
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Il Trittico
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: Sir Donald Runnicles / John Fiore [Dec.]; 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.
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Anna Bolena
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.
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Written on Skin
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.
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Pikowaja Dama - Pique Dame
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.
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Intermezzo
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.
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Nixon in China
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.
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Our video recommendations

Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold, on 11, 21, 28 May 2024
video - 03:06 min.

Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold, on 11, 21 ...

Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold, on 11, 21, 28 May 2024
Richard Wagner: Die Walküre, on 12, 22, 29 May 2024
video - 02:56 min.

Richard Wagner: Die Walküre, on 12, 22 ...

Richard Wagner: Die Walküre, on 12, 22, 29 May 2024
Richard Wagner: Siegfried, on 18, 24, 31 May 2024
video - 02:30 min.

Richard Wagner: Siegfried, on 18, 24, 31 ...

Richard Wagner: Siegfried, on 18, 24, 31 May 2024
Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung, on 20, 26 May; 2 June 2024
video - 02:59 min.

Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung, on 20 ...

Richard Wagner: Götterdämmerung, on 20, 26 May; 2 June 2024

Topics

The Pink Power for Puccini
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.
Read in our blog
Il Trittico
The Bayreuth Wagner
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).
All about
Die Hard, Anna
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.
Read in our blog
Anna Bolena
A momentous affair
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.
Read in our blog
Written on Skin
In the spirit of friendship
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.
Read in our blog
Pique Dame
The seven paths to marital bliss
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.
Read in our blog
Intermezzo
The private domain is musical
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.
Read in our blog
Intermezzo
Who’s conducting whom here?
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.
Read in our blog
Nixon in China
His big occasion
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.
Read in our blog
Nixon in China
Departing into the open

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!
To the Tischlerei schedule
Premieres, concerts, revivals in the Tischlerei
The Tischlerei Schedule
Zeroth Law
World premiere on 27 September 2023

Zeroth Law

The question of a possible coexistence of man and machine is at the centre of the robot trilogy by the retro-futuristic duo Gamut Inc. After OVER THE EDGE CLUB and ROSSUMS UNIVERSAL ROBOTS, they now transform the Tischlerei into a hybrid soundscape with the third part ZEROTH LAW together with the RIAS Chamber Choir and the music machines of the legendary robot orchestra founded by Godfried-Willem Raes at the Stichting Logos in Ghent.
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Ghosts in the machine
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.
Read in our blog
Zeroth Law
Beta
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.
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Who will watch the watchmen?
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.
Read in our blog
Beta
Frank / Frank / Ehnes / Aschenbrenner [WT]
Premiere on 12 June 2024

Frank / Frank / Ehnes / Aschenbrenner [WT]

What does it mean to think of a music that outlasts the human age, that sings, hums, screams and breathes beyond the Anthropocene? At the same time, questions arise about the sustainability of the theatre's concrete building material, which can be dismantled and composted. Based on such questions, the team with Patrick Frank, Andreas Eduardo Frank, Barbara Ehnes and Karla Max Aschenbrenner is developing a music theatre. Advance booking will begin at a later date.
Making an opera back to front
FRANK / FRANK / EHNES ... – from 17 June 2024

Making an opera back to front

Usually, work on an opera begins with the text, then the music is created, then come the direction and stage design. In Barbara Ehnes' and Karla Max Aschenbrenner's production, however, all this is reversed. That is what makes it so exciting.
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