Munich Opera Festival 2024
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Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
28 Jun 2024, Fri
•
7 PM
The piece described by György Ligeti himself as anti-anti-opera is criss-crossed with historical music quotes, extreme coloratura arias, thorny rhythm, peculiar use of instruments and all kinds o...
Composer:
György Ligeti
Cast:
Kent Nagano,
Avery Amereau,
.... + 6
Le Grand Macabre
Premiere of this production:
12 April 1978,
Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm
Act 1
Scene 1
This opens with a choir of 12 jarring car horns, played with pitches and rhythms specified in the score. These suggest, very abstractly, a barren modern landscape and a traffic jam of sorts. As the overture ends, Piet the Pot, "by trade wine taster," in the country of Breughelland (named after the artist that loosely inspired it), appears to deliver a drunken lament, compl ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
29 Jun 2024, Sat
•
7 PM
All the ingredients of Verdi's dramatic abundance appear here: mysterious sound worlds, harsh contrasts, vocal brilliance, opulent tableaux. The cohesive narrative style gives way to the variation...
Composer:
Giuseppe Verdi
Cast:
Marina Rebeka,
Vittorio Grigolo,
.... + 7
Il trovatore
Premiere of this production:
19 January 1853,
Teatro Apollo, Rome
Count di Luna, meanwhile deceased, had two sons. One day a gypsy was discovered standing beside the cradle of the younger son. When the child subsequently became ill, the woman was condemned to death at the stake for being a witch. The gypsy’s daughter, Azucena, thereupon abducted Luna’s younger son in order to burn him to death in the same place and thus take revenge for her mother&rs ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
30 Jun 2024, Sun
•
8 PM
Elektra's father: murdered. Her mother and her paramour Ägisth were his murderers. The disheveled Elektra is determined to avenge the parricide. She has the axe for the deed but not the stren...
Composer:
Richard Strauss
Cast:
Bavarian State Orchestra,
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera,
.... + 4
Elektra
Premiere of this production:
25 January 1909,
Königliches Opernhaus, Dresden
On his return from the Trojan War, King Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, wishes to avenge her murdered father. She is awaiting the return of her brother, Orestes, who was removed from the court as a child after the murder of his father.
The maids taunt and jeer at Electra, who is forced to live as an o ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
1 Jul 2024, Mon
•
7 PM
The piece described by György Ligeti himself as anti-anti-opera is criss-crossed with historical music quotes, extreme coloratura arias, thorny rhythm, peculiar use of instruments and all kinds o...
Cast:
Kent Nagano,
Avery Amereau,
.... + 6
Le Grand Macabre
Premiere of this production:
12 April 1978,
Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm
Act 1
Scene 1
This opens with a choir of 12 jarring car horns, played with pitches and rhythms specified in the score. These suggest, very abstractly, a barren modern landscape and a traffic jam of sorts. As the overture ends, Piet the Pot, "by trade wine taster," in the country of Breughelland (named after the artist that loosely inspired it), appears to deliver a drunken lament, compl ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
2 Jul 2024, Tue
•
7 PM
All the ingredients of Verdi's dramatic abundance appear here: mysterious sound worlds, harsh contrasts, vocal brilliance, opulent tableaux. The cohesive narrative style gives way to the variation...
Cast:
Marina Rebeka,
Vittorio Grigolo,
.... + 7
Il trovatore
Premiere of this production:
19 January 1853,
Teatro Apollo, Rome
Count di Luna, meanwhile deceased, had two sons. One day a gypsy was discovered standing beside the cradle of the younger son. When the child subsequently became ill, the woman was condemned to death at the stake for being a witch. The gypsy’s daughter, Azucena, thereupon abducted Luna’s younger son in order to burn him to death in the same place and thus take revenge for her mother&rs ... Read More
Ballet
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
3 Jul 2024, Wed
•
7:30 PM
Angelin Preljocaj created Le Parc in 1994 for the Ballet of the Opéra de Paris starring Isabelle Guérin and Laurent Hilaire. The choreography plays with elements from classical...
Cast:
Bavarian State Ballet,
Bavarian State Orchestra,
.... + 1
Le Parc
Premiere of this production:
09 April 1994,
Opéra de Paris, Paris
Act I
Each section begins with a weird, stiffly-moving, coven of Gardeners. Are they fate? Are they the rigid rules of society? Wearing welder’s glasses and butcher’s aprons, are they hiding from the light of day or does this indicate that love is blind, scalding, fatal? Their music will sound like a train wreck or the repetitive grind of a factory assembly line: are we ever in c ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
4 Jul 2024, Thu
•
7 PM
The piece described by György Ligeti himself as anti-anti-opera is criss-crossed with historical music quotes, extreme coloratura arias, thorny rhythm, peculiar use of instruments and all kinds o...
Cast:
Kent Nagano,
Avery Amereau,
.... + 6
Le Grand Macabre
Premiere of this production:
12 April 1978,
Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm
Act 1
Scene 1
This opens with a choir of 12 jarring car horns, played with pitches and rhythms specified in the score. These suggest, very abstractly, a barren modern landscape and a traffic jam of sorts. As the overture ends, Piet the Pot, "by trade wine taster," in the country of Breughelland (named after the artist that loosely inspired it), appears to deliver a drunken lament, compl ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
5 Jul 2024, Fri
•
7 PM
The Munich world premiere in 1781 was an artistic liberation for Mozart. Theatre-goers found their own access to the opera genre in the interaction with the tradition of orchestra and scenery in the C...
Composer:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Cast:
Bavarian State Orchestra,
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera,
.... + 5
Idomeneo
Premiere of this production:
29 January 1781,
Cuvilliés Theatre, Munich
The overture, in D major and common time, is in a modified sonata form in which the development is but a very short transition section connecting the exposition with the recapitulation. Other conventional hallmarks of the sonata form are apparent: the exposition modulates from the tonic (D major) to the dominant (A major), while the recapitulation is centred on the tonic. The overture concludes wi ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
6 Jul 2024, Sat
•
6 PM
Elektra's father: murdered. Her mother and her paramour Ägisth were his murderers. The disheveled Elektra is determined to avenge the parricide. She has the axe for the deed but not the stren...
Cast:
Bavarian State Orchestra,
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera,
.... + 4
Elektra
Premiere of this production:
25 January 1909,
Königliches Opernhaus, Dresden
On his return from the Trojan War, King Agamemnon was murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. Electra, the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, wishes to avenge her murdered father. She is awaiting the return of her brother, Orestes, who was removed from the court as a child after the murder of his father.
The maids taunt and jeer at Electra, who is forced to live as an o ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
7 Jul 2024, Sun
•
6 PM
The piece described by György Ligeti himself as anti-anti-opera is criss-crossed with historical music quotes, extreme coloratura arias, thorny rhythm, peculiar use of instruments and all kinds o...
Cast:
Kent Nagano,
Avery Amereau,
.... + 6
Le Grand Macabre
Premiere of this production:
12 April 1978,
Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm
Act 1
Scene 1
This opens with a choir of 12 jarring car horns, played with pitches and rhythms specified in the score. These suggest, very abstractly, a barren modern landscape and a traffic jam of sorts. As the overture ends, Piet the Pot, "by trade wine taster," in the country of Breughelland (named after the artist that loosely inspired it), appears to deliver a drunken lament, compl ... Read More
Classical Concert
7 Jul 2024, Sun
•
8 PM
Cast:
Asmik Grigorian, Lukas Geniušas
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
8 Jul 2024, Mon
•
7 PM
The Munich world premiere in 1781 was an artistic liberation for Mozart. Theatre-goers found their own access to the opera genre in the interaction with the tradition of orchestra and scenery in the C...
Cast:
Bavarian State Orchestra,
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera,
.... + 5
Idomeneo
Premiere of this production:
29 January 1781,
Cuvilliés Theatre, Munich
The overture, in D major and common time, is in a modified sonata form in which the development is but a very short transition section connecting the exposition with the recapitulation. Other conventional hallmarks of the sonata form are apparent: the exposition modulates from the tonic (D major) to the dominant (A major), while the recapitulation is centred on the tonic. The overture concludes wi ... Read More
Opera
9 Jul 2024, Tue
•
7 PM
Pelléas et Mélisande is a tragedy of the inner self, enigmatic, morbid, deeply sad and full of beauty. Appearing for the first time at the Bayerische Staatsoper with this production...
Composer:
Claude Debussy
Cast:
Christian Gerhaher,
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla,
.... + 6
Pelléas et Mélisande
Premiere of this production:
30 April 1902,
Opéra-Comique, Paris
Act 1
Scene 1: A forest
Prince Golaud, grandson of King Arkel of Allemonde, has become lost while hunting in the forest. He discovers a frightened, weeping girl sitting by a spring in which a crown is visible. She reveals her name is Mélisande but nothing else about her origins and refuses to let Golaud retrieve her crown from the water. Golaud persuades her to come with him before the fo ... Read More
Modern Ballet
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
10 Jul 2024, Wed
•
7:30 PM
The three choreographies of this new Triple Bill, which opens the Ballet Festival Week 2024, revolve around different forms of escaping the world.
Composer:
Julien Tarride,
Karl Jenkins,
Ori Lichtik
Cast:
Bavarian State Ballet
Opera
11 Jul 2024, Thu
•
7 PM
Pelléas et Mélisande is a tragedy of the inner self, enigmatic, morbid, deeply sad and full of beauty. Appearing for the first time at the Bayerische Staatsoper with this production...
Cast:
Christian Gerhaher,
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla,
.... + 6
Pelléas et Mélisande
Premiere of this production:
30 April 1902,
Opéra-Comique, Paris
Act 1
Scene 1: A forest
Prince Golaud, grandson of King Arkel of Allemonde, has become lost while hunting in the forest. He discovers a frightened, weeping girl sitting by a spring in which a crown is visible. She reveals her name is Mélisande but nothing else about her origins and refuses to let Golaud retrieve her crown from the water. Golaud persuades her to come with him before the fo ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
12 Jul 2024, Fri
•
7 PM
Discover the secret, crack the code, get the key: What drives us to submit to the unknown, to forget what we originally felt and who we are?
Composer:
Pyotr Tchaikovsky
Cast:
Lise Davidsen,
Aziz Shokhakimov,
.... + 6
The Queen of Spades
Premiere of this production:
29 March 1890,
Mariinsky Theatre, St. Petersburg
Time: The close of the 18th century
Place: St. Petersburg, Russia
Act 1
Scene 1
During the reign of Catherine the Great (1762–96), children are at play in St. Petersburg's Summer Garden pretending to be soldiers. Two officers — Tsurin and Chekalinsky — enter, the former complaining about his bad luck at gambling. They remark that another officer, Herman, seems obsessed wi ... Read More
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
13 Jul 2024, Sat
•
7 PM
Following the Opera Studio production of Così fan tutte in the 2008/2009 season, with The Passenger Tobias Kratzer, born in 1980 in Landshut, Bavaria, now stages his second ...
Composer:
Mieczysław Weinberg
Cast:
Bavarian State Orchestra,
Charles Workman,
.... + 5
The Passenger
Premiere of this production:
25 December 2006,
Svetlanov Hall of the Moscow International House of Music
The opera is set on two levels: the upper level depicts the deck of an ocean liner after the Second World War where a German couple, Lisa and Walter (a West German diplomat on his way with his new wife to a new diplomatic posting), are sailing to Brazil. The wife, Lisa, thinks she recognises a Polish woman on board, Marta, as a former inmate of Auschwitz concentration camp where she, unknown to he ... Read More
Classical Concert
13 Jul 2024, Sat
•
8 PM
Cast:
Golda Schultz, Jonathan Ware
Opera
Bavarian State Opera, National Theatre
14 Jul 2024, Sun
•
4 PM
With much love for tempo and situation comedy, the staging by Evgeny Titov examines the question as to why humanity proves time and again how fragile it is and where the weak points are. For this, the...
Cast:
Bavarian State Orchestra,
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera,
.... + 5
Le Nozze di Figaro
Premiere of this production:
01 May 1786,
Burgtheater, Vienna
The play is set at the castle of Aguas Frescas, three leagues from Seville.
Act I
The play begins in a room in the Count's castle—the bedroom to be shared by Figaro and Suzanne after their wedding, which is set to occur later that day. Suzanne reveals to Figaro her suspicion that the Count gave them this particular room because it is so close to his own, and that the Count has been pre ... Read More
Opera
14 Jul 2024, Sun
•
7 PM
Pelléas et Mélisande is a tragedy of the inner self, enigmatic, morbid, deeply sad and full of beauty. Appearing for the first time at the Bayerische Staatsoper with this production...
Cast:
Christian Gerhaher,
Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla,
.... + 6
Pelléas et Mélisande
Premiere of this production:
30 April 1902,
Opéra-Comique, Paris
Act 1
Scene 1: A forest
Prince Golaud, grandson of King Arkel of Allemonde, has become lost while hunting in the forest. He discovers a frightened, weeping girl sitting by a spring in which a crown is visible. She reveals her name is Mélisande but nothing else about her origins and refuses to let Golaud retrieve her crown from the water. Golaud persuades her to come with him before the fo ... Read More
Munich Opera Festival 2024
The tradition of the Munich Opera Festival dates back to 1875, when a "Festive Summer" was organized for the first time. This tradition will continue under the directorship of Serge Dorny. The 2024 Munich Opera Festival will showcase the new productions of the season, based on the central theme of "A Fountain That Looks to Heaven."
The Munich Opera Festival's two opera premieres, Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti and Pelléas et Mélisande by Claude Debussy, present contemporary opera and a masterpiece of musical impressionism.
One focus of the 2024 Munich Opera Festival will be on works by Giacomo Puccini and Richard Wagner. The program includes four works by the two composers, which are also among the most important operas in the repertoire: In addition to Richard Wagner's Tannhäuser and Parsifal, Giacomo Puccini's Tosca and La fanciulla del West will be presented. Puccini's Tosca will also be featured as a live audiovisual broadcast on Max-Joseph-Platz at Opera for All during the 2024 Munich Opera Festival.
Numerous chamber concerts and song recitals complete the program.
The ballet evening Sphären.02 | Preljocaj will also premiere during the Munich Opera Festival with contemporary ballets by choreographers of the younger generation and Angelin Preljocaj. The Bayerische Staatsballett also revives the two new productions of the season, Le Parc by Angelin Preljoca and an evening that will be created by Nacho Duato, Andrew Skeels and Sharon Eyal.
About the Munich Opera Festival
The Munich Opera Festival is the glamorous highlight and at the same time, the culmination of the opera year, and in June and July brings opera enthusiasts from all over the world to Munich. Opera, ballet, lieder recitals and festival concerts with an alternating topical focus point are presented over five weeks, while the season’s premieres are also brought back to the stage.
The Munich Opera Festival takes place yearly in the Bavarian capital from late June to late July. Preceding on the calendar the two nearby festivals of Bayreuth and Salzburg, which both start in late July, the festival summarizes the concluding main season's work of the Bavarian State Opera, which administers it, and offers premieres of new stage productions by the company, Germany's largest.
Venues used include the Nationaltheater, the Prinzregententheater, the Cuvilliés-Theater and the Allerheiligen-Hofkirche. Besides opera, concerts of chamber music are given to showcase the work of members of the Bavarian State Orchestra, which serves in the pit for all opera performances. The festival is formally opened each year with a choral concert performed as part of a full Roman Catholic church service at Michaelskirche; this is led by the Archbishop of Munich and Freising, with the opera company's music director overseeing the work of the musicians in the organ loft. A festival highlight is Opera for All, the live transmission of a full-length production from the theater to an outdoor audience seated in Max-Joseph-Platz.
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