“Don‘t you know the horrible dark place, don’t you know the evil one lives there?” Hastily, their parents set out for the woods to save Hansel and Gretel from the witch Rosina Leckermaul. As they feared, the children have got lost in the woods and found the gingerbread house. They cannot resist the sweet temptation – and fall straight into the trap of the witch, who likes children so much she could eat them up… literally.
As in most tales of the Brothers Grimm, in Engelbert Humperdinck’s setting of the fairytale all ends well: until that point, however, Humperdinck’s romantic music accompanies the children deep into the dark forest of legend. Here it invokes magical beings, calls on 14 angels to protect the siblings and allows the witch to ride her broomstick through the air.

Hansel and Gretel

Hamburg State Opera

This opera is the world in a theatrical nutshell: it deals with growing older, with trials and tribulations, with intransparent decisions. One person searches for individuality, another is too lazy to do so. Others postulate that the community is the only adequate place for the individual. Power has either been legitimised by long tradition or usurped by new regimes. Values such as assimilation and loyalty are set against self-assertiveness and independence. There is loving and dreaming, cheating and trusting. Suicides are prevented, tests passed, adventures survived. Who is right? Who has been wronged? The world of the magic flute is opaque, and everyone is looking for a pathway: within it, into it or out of it. Who holds the reigns? Who can be trusted? Could it be music?

EPSG:4326

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

Staatsoper Hamburg

A REDISCOVERY - NATIONAL EPIC OR FAIRYTALE OPERA ABOUT THE FIGHT AGAINST EVIL?

Who is good and who is evil in this fairytale opera - and why? The nucleus of Pushkin's setting of Ruslan and Lyudmila by Mikhail Glinka is the abduction of the princess's daughter Lyudmila from Kiev, the center of both the Russian and Ukrainian founding myths. For Ruslan, the warrior promised to her, this marks the beginning of an adventurous journey through the magical realm of a powerful dwarf. The rescue operation escalates into a showdown between the men fighting for Lyudmila. But she herself increasingly becomes a distant vision of love - the longed-for prize for heroism. In 1842, in the midst of the awakening Russian national sentiment, Glinka conceived the idea of a culturally united tsarist empire, in which he merged Slavic, Finnish and Arabic melos with the bel canto fashion of his time.

Ruslan und Ljudmila

Tristano e Isotta – Tristan and Isolde set an example: Nemorino has the evident idea to boost the feelings of his beloved Adina with a love potion. The charlatan Dulcamara sees his chance for a good deal and sells a bottle of the pretended potion to the unhappy lover...

The Elixir of Love

Podcast link: https://youtu.be/4hagYvrYbuM

The Artelize Podcast and Kasper Holten - Pedefining Opera for the modern world

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d36M5Hi6O80

The Artelize Podcast - A legacy of innovation in Opera: Celebrating Marc A. Scorca

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59E40S_EQSY

The Artelize Podcast: A love letter that was never sent

Podcast link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THv6htilWtI

The Artelize Podcast and Adolfo Corrado: Mediterranean flavors, opera and social media

Scarpia, Rome’s chief of police, desires Tosca. Since her lover, the painter Cavaradossi, is among the government’s political enemies, Scarpia has him imprisoned. He orders Cavaradossi’s execution and hopes to force Tosca into granting him one night with her, in exchange for Cavaradossi’s release. She, however, thwarts his plans…

Tosca

Violetta is the most sought-after courtesan of the Parisian demimonde. However, her encounter with Alfredo makes her pleasure-seeking life seem questionable: they fall in love and try to build a life for themselves, far from the fast pleasures of the city...

La Traviata

Senta's dreams are directed towards the sea: will the man who will free her from her restricted life at home come from there? It begins stormily; Wagner's first fully valid opera presents a grandiose, overwhelming vision of the elements already in the overture. The fate of the Flying Dutchman and the woman who is to redeem him takes place in the roar of the waves and the ocean. This "romantic opera" aims to transcend boundaries.

The Flying Dutchman

The Flying Dutchma

The return of two grand masters: Gustav Mahler – star conductor, visionary composer, and the most famous General Music Director in the history of the State Opera. His music unfolds a panorama of human experience – constantly fluctuating between joie de vivre and the dance of death. Director Christoph Marthaler, known for his idiosyncratic and playful scenic collages, approaches Mahler's oeuvre with an intense chamber piece.

The Troublemakers

Musical theater on the current state of affairs: As avatars of themselves, the exceptional artists Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek send two "vampires" on a journey around the world and observe the decline of humanity. But what kind of world is this, one that can only be saved by a monster named Gorgonzilla? Tobias Kratzer stages this brand-new political grotesque as a contemporary Grand Guignol.

Monster’s Paradise

The outsider Herman loves Liza, who is engaged to Prince Yeletsky. Herman is a passionate gambler: he is desperate to win a fortune and reputation in order to win Liza’s heart. When he learns that her grandmother knows the secret of the three winning cards, fate takes its course.

Pique Dame

Maria and Elisabetta: two queens fight for power and love. Between them stands Count Leicester, Elisabetta's lover, who is attracted to Maria. The two women meet in the park of Fotheringhay Castle - a duel of emotions, fought with the weapons of bel canto, coloratura on a knife's edge. In the end, the Catholic Maria will ascend the scaffold with her head held high, while the Protestant Elisabetta will keep her throne but lose her love.

Mary Stuart

Culture creates meaning and structure. The music theater project by Christopher Rüping, Omer Meir Wellber, and Malte Ubenauf demonstrates that it can even provide existential support. Here, for an extraterrestrial group, Mozart's music becomes a daily reminder and admonition of what it means to be and remain human. And what happens when it all falls silent. Thus, we rediscover Mozart's music in distant worlds.

The Great Silence

For Leonora, the song of the troubadour Manrico holds the promise and glow of love; Manrico's rival Count Luna perceives in it threat and danger. Verdi's opera is a celebration of Italian opera singing at its best - so it is no coincidence that the title character is a singer himself.

The Troubadour

Elsa of Brabant is suspected of having killed her younger brother Gottfried in the forest. When King Henry the Fowler asks Elsa to defend herself, she pleads for an imaginary knight to come to her aid. Suddenly, Lohengrin, the Knight of the Swan, appears. He promises to fight for Elsa, but makes her promise beforehand never to question him about his identity or provenance.

Lohengrin

Three masterpieces – two centuries – one narrative. There is Schumann's song cycle "Frauenliebe und -leben ," in which the feelings of the nameless protagonist revolve around the needs of a man. There is Duke Bluebeard's Castle , in which two mysterious strangers are magically attracted to each other. And there is the bourgeois, liberal marriage construct of Oscar Wilde's Florentine Tragedy . These raise the question: Do people desire the same throughout all ages?

Women's Love and Death

The war is over, and tragedy takes its course: the mother and her lover murder the father upon his return. The daughter hides her brother, keeping him safe. – Every day, Elektra thinks of her murdered father, plotting blood-stained celebrations of victory and waiting for the moment when her brother, reared as an avenger, returns...

Elektra

Nagasaki, Japan, ca. 1900: Pinkerton, a lieutenant in the American navy, has fallen in love with Cio-Cio-San, also known as “Butterfly”. The Japanese ritual marriage ceremony is merely a farce to him – and shortly thereafter, Pinkerton’s “plaything” is alone again, with their child. Three years later, he returns to Japan, but not because of Butterfly...

Madama Butterfly

"The success was tremendous and unprecedented! Critics, artists, amateurs and music lovers were intoxicated ... The auditorium roared apart, loudly proclaiming the new miracle." Thus a report on the premiere in 1821 at the Berlin Schauspielhaus. Der Freischütz struck a chord with the times, every barrel organ played the "Jungfernkranz", every street singer performed it, as Heine reports.

Opera events in Hamburg

Hansel and Gretel

Staatsoper Hamburg

Die Zauberflöte (The Magi...

Staatsoper Hamburg

Ruslan und Ljudmila

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Elixir of Love

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast - A ...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast: A l...

Artelize

The Artelize Podcast and ...

Artelize

Tosca

Staatsoper Hamburg

La Traviata

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Flying Dutchman

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Flying Dutchma

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Troublemakers

Staatsoper Hamburg

Monster’s Paradise

Staatsoper Hamburg

Pique Dame

Staatsoper Hamburg

Pique Dame

Staatsoper Hamburg

Mary Stuart

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Great Silence

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Troubadour

Staatsoper Hamburg

Lohengrin

Staatsoper Hamburg

Women's Love and Death

Staatsoper Hamburg

Elektra

Staatsoper Hamburg

Madama Butterfly

Staatsoper Hamburg

The Marksman

Staatsoper Hamburg