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Schedule - Deutsche Oper Berlin

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Richard Strauss im März

Arabella

Richard Strauss [1864 – 1949]

Information on the piece

Lyrische Komödie in drei Aufzügen
Dichtung von Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Uraufführung am 1. Juli 1933 in Dresden
Premiere an der Deutschen Oper Berlin am 18. März 2023

ca. 3 Stunden 30 Minuten | Zwei Pausen

In deutscher Sprache mit deutschen und englischen Übertiteln

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

empfohlen ab 15 Jahren
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The programme booklet
Blättern Sie sich durch das Programmheft oder laden Sie es als PDF herunter: Externer Link zu Issuu
Our thanks to our partners

Mit Unterstützung des Förderkreises der Deutschen Oper Berlin e. V.

About the performance

About the work
Vienna, circa 1860. The financially strapped Count Waldner is lodging with his family in a Viennese hotel. His only path to solvency is for him to secure an advantageous marriage for one of his two daughters – and the family can only afford to present Arabella, the eldest, in the upper circles of society. To conceal the family’s indigence, the parents have raised Zdenka as a boy, dressing her accordingly. Arabella is not short of suitors but has resolved to wait for ‘Mr Right’. When Mandryka, an aristocrat from a distant region, arrives, he and Arabella are instantly smitten. Arabella only asks to be able to bid farewell to her friends and suitors at the Fasching ball that evening.

At the ball, Arabella says goodbye to her admirers. There is also the young officer Matteo, with whom Zdenka is secretly in love and with whom she has formed a friendship under the guise of her disguise as a boy. Matteo, however, desires Arabella and is distraught when he realises the hopelessness of his love. Zdenka devises a plan: she fakes a letter from Arabella in which she promises Matteo a night of love together. But instead she wants to wait for him herself in the darkness of the hotel room. Mandryka learns of Arabella's alleged infidelity and goes to the hotel with the ball guests to surprise Arabella in flagrante delicto.

Arabella, innocent of this, is initially shocked and saddened by Mandryka’s suspicions but forgives him when the mix-up is revealed for what it is. The two agree to marry, as do Zdenka and Matteo.

About the production
Richard Strauss’s orchestral richness and opulence coupled with the period Viennese setting of the work led to ARABELLA being falsely pigeonholed as a light-hearted comedy of errors from its 1933 premiere onwards. In the estimation of Tobias Kratzer, however, who triumphed at the Deutsche Oper with his production of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s THE DWARF, this final collaboration between Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal marks a collision of two world views: the traditional roles of men and women on the one hand – as expressed in Arabella’s famous solo “Und du sollst mein Gebieter sein” – and a modern idea of social interaction on the other – as illustrated by Zdenka with her questioning of gender-based identities. Here, Kratzer turns the spotlight on this disunity between the various character portrayals in ARABELLA and explores these role-specific tensions on a continuum stretching from 19th-century Vienna to the present day.

Our recommendations

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