Staatsoper Hamburg tickets 22 February 2025 - Death In Venice | GoComGo.com

Death In Venice

Staatsoper Hamburg, Main Stage, Hamburg, Germany
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7:30 PM
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US$ 112

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Important Info
Type: Modern Ballet
City: Hamburg, Germany
Starts at: 19:30
Acts: 2
Intervals: 1
Duration: 2h 20min

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast
Performers
Piano: David Fray
Ballet company: Hamburg Ballett
Creators
Composer: Richard Wagner
Composer: Johann Sebastian Bach
Staging: John Neumeier
Novelist: Thomas Mann
Overview

A Dance of Death by John Neumeier based on the novella by Thomas Mann

What fascinates me in my interpretation of Thomas Mann’s novella is the depiction of absolute love. Tadzio causes Aschenbach to confront a hidden part of himself. Before meeting Tadzio, dignity, fame and his work which has gained him an aristocratic title have meant everything to Aschenbach. At first, he fights against his emotions justifying his fascination for the young man with purely aesthetic reasoning. Ultimately he surrenders to love – turning to life and bringing about his "Death in Venice".

John Neumeier

History
Premiere of this production: 07 December 2003, Staatsoper Hamburg, Hamburg

Thomas Mann termed his novella Death in Venice (1911) as a “tragedy of degradation”, a degradation shared by numerous aesthetes and modernist artist during fin de siècle, and rendered even more poignant today, in a debased world of reality shows and narcissistic hyperproduction of tweets and selfies, which – paradoxically – distance us from each other even more palpably.

Synopsis

PART I

I Fame and Creation
His name and fame firmly established, the great choreographer Gustav von Aschenbach begins work on a new ballet based on the Prussian King Frederick the Great. Aschenbach is the acclaimed master of formal symmetry and structure – his ballets are modern classics. But now, the artist's fear of not finishing, of failure, clouds his vision. Panic impedes creation. The "Frederick Project" should be his masterpiece, but his concept becomes more and more obscure and confused. Unconscious memories of his poetic, impulsive dead mother distract him from his work. The court ballerina "La Barbarina" and Frederick the Great, characters of his creative imagination, appear, seeming to demand choreographic form and immortality. A crisis…

II On the Brink of Exhaustion
Frustrated and exhausted Aschenbach abandons his work. An encounter with a mysterious stranger arouses his thirst for travel.

III A Sensation of swimming – The Journey to Venice
The desire to get away overcomes him. He travels to Venice. A strangely familiar gondolier brings Aschenbach across the Lagoon to the Lido.

IV The Silent Encounter – Hôtel des Bains
In the lobby, the elegant Venetian society promenades. Their glances of recognition and obvious awareness of his celebrity intensify Aschenbach's discomfort. Two effeminate young men dance outrageously with each other, then flirt with Aschenbach. Irritated he begins to leave. Tadzio, a strikingly beautiful young man, enters barefoot. The youth engages Aschenbach's attention, fires his imagination. He stays…

PART II

V In Elysium – On the Lido
The Beach. Aschenbach observes the playful activities of Tadzio and his companions. The sun seems to turn his attention from intellectual to sensory perception. Tadzio's smile overwhelms Aschenbach. Inspired by Tadzio's presence, he choreographs a pas de deux of true emotional love.

VI A Dionysian Dream
Aschenbach falls asleep on the beach. An orgiastic dream overtakes him: bodies, tumult and frenzied erotic dance. He gives himself over to the Other God. Unnerved and shattered Aschenbach awakes.

VII Metamorphosis
With a hairdressing gown draped over him, Aschenbach leans back in the chair: "We are only so old as we feel in our hearts and minds. A man in your position has a right to his natural hair colour" says the barber.

VIII Dance of Death – Cholera in Venice
A Street Musician gives a vulgar performance in the hotel garden. The player is brutal and bold, dangerous and relentless. Hotel guests fall ill – and die.

IX The pure sound of the Piano: Decision and Farewell
Nevertheless, Gustav von Aschenbach decides to stay. He lets go of his art, his artistry, destroys his creations. His "Frederick the Great" will remain unfinished...

X Liebestod
Aschenbach turns from art to life – and death in Venice.

Venue Info

Staatsoper Hamburg - Hamburg
Location   Große Theaterstraße 25

Staatsoper Hamburg is the oldest publicly accessible musical theater in Germany, located in Hamburg. It was founded in 1678. With the emergence of the Hamburg Opera House, researchers attribute the formation of a national German opera school.

Opera in Hamburg dates to 2 January 1678 when the Oper am Gänsemarkt was inaugurated with a performance of a biblical Singspiel by Johann Theile. It was not a court theatre but the first public opera house in Germany established by the art-loving citizens of Hamburg, a prosperous member of the Hanseatic League.

The Hamburg Bürgeroper resisted the dominance of the Italianate style and rapidly became the leading musical center of the German Baroque. In 1703, George Friedrich Handel was engaged as violinist and harpsichordist and performances of his operas were not long in appearing. In 1705, Hamburg gave the world première of his opera Nero.

In 1721, Georg Philipp Telemann, a central figure of the German Baroque, joined the Hamburg Opera, and in subsequent years Christoph Willibald Gluck, Johann Adolph Hasse and various Italian companies were among the guests.

To replace the aging wooden structure, the first stone was laid on 18 May 1826 for the Stadt-Theater on the present-day site of the Staatsoper Hamburg. The new theater, with seating for 2,800 guest, was inaugurated less than a year later with Beethoven's incidental music to Egmont.

In 1873, both the exterior and interior of the structure were renovated in the reigning "Gründerzeit" style of the time, and again in 1891, when electric lighting was introduced.

Under the direction of Bernhard Pollini, the house mounted its first complete Ring Cycle in 1879. In 1883, the year of Wagner's death, a cycle comprising nine of his operas commenced. The musical directors Hans von Bülow (from 1887 to 1890) and Gustav Mahler (from 1891 to 1897) also contributed to the fame of the opera house.

In the beginning of the 20th century, opera was an important part of the theatre's repertoire; among the 321 performances during the 1907–08 season, 282 were performances of opera. The Stadt-Theater performed not only established repertoire but also new works, such as Paul Hindemith's Sancta Susanna, Igor Stravinsky's The Soldier's Tale, Ernst Krenek's Jonny spielt auf, and Leoš Janáček's Jenůfa. Ferruccio Busoni's Die Brautwahl (1912) and Erich Wolfgang Korngold's Die tote Stadt (1920) both had their world premieres in Hamburg. In the 1930s, after Hitler came to power, the opera house was renamed Hamburgische Staatsoper.

On the night of 2 August 1943, both the auditorium and its neighbouring buildings were destroyed during air raids by fire-bombing; a low-flying airplane dropped several petrol and phosphorus containers onto the middle of the roof of the auditorium, causing it to erupt into a conflagration.

The current Staatsoper opened on 15 October 1955 with Mozart's Die Zauberflöte. Hamburg continued to devote itself to new works, such as Hans Werner Henze's The Prince of Homburg (1960), Stravinsky's The Flood (1963), Gian Carlo Menotti's Help, Help, the Globolinks! (1968), and Mauricio Kagel's Staatstheater (1971).

In 1967, under the direction of Joachim Hess, the Staatsoper Hamburg became the first company to broadcasts its operas in color on television, beginning with Die Hochzeit des Figaro (a German translation of Le Nozze di Figaro). Ten of these television productions have been released on DVD by ArtHaus Musik as Cult Opera of the 1970s, as well as separately. All of these were performed in German regardless of the original language (six were written in German, one in French, two in English, and one in Italian).

More recently, Hamburg gave the world premières of Wolfgang Rihm's Die Eroberung von Mexico (1992) and Helmut Lachenmann's Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern (1997), for which it received much international acclaim. The company has won the "Opera House of the Year" award by the German magazine Opernwelt in 1997 and in 2005.

Important Info
Type: Modern Ballet
City: Hamburg, Germany
Starts at: 19:30
Acts: 2
Intervals: 1
Duration: 2h 20min
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