Production Archive

Caught between Baroque and contemporary music, Kai Röhrig and Florentine Klepper's opera class set out in search of clues with ‘Medusa / Giuditta’, following on from the successful double bill ‘Elissa / Dido & Aeneas’ in 2023.

The performance of Vincenzo Bellini's opera I Capuleti e i Montecchi delivered a powerful reinterpretation of the masterpiece. Directed by Alexander von Pfeil, the production centred on the relentless feud between two rival clans and the profound despair of its victims. This staging transcended specific eras, placing the story in a universal, timeless setting that brought Bellini's dark vision of love and war to the stage with harrowing clarity.

As a play, La Folle journée by the scandalous author Pierre Auguste Caron de Beaumarchais was banned in Vienna. However, Mozart and Da Ponte were able to suggest to Emperor Joseph II that the genre of opera would defuse the revolutionarily objectionable text and were thus commissioned to compose and write the libretto. The question of whether they did not in fact intensify the play in other ways is one that is posed anew in every production. With Le nozze di Figaro, Gernot Sahler and Alexander von Pfeil's opera class continued their Da Ponte cycle, which began with Così fan tutte in May 2023.

Sir John Falstaff is a natural phenomenon: his appearance is imposing, his demeanour commanding, his manner possessive. And most fascinating of all: the event does not care about rules, conventions or decorum, it simply exists for its own sake, in a sense for nothing but its belly.

"What qualities must a person possess in order to dominate both dramaturgically and vocally in an opera?" and "What must a man of mature age look like who is in close relationships with a crazy old lady, a young girl and a doctor at the same time?"

With her production, Rosamund Gilmore embarked on a journey into the subconscious and combined the deep psychological layers of the fairy tale with the film-visualized works of Claudia Lehmann's students.

More than 330 years after the premiere of the only complete opera by Henry Purcell, the French composer Henry Fourès composes a setting for Dido and Aeneas and calls it "Elissa". A second name for the queen that allows the character to exist on its own, without direct ties to Aeneas.