Bayerische Staatsoper

The Queen of the Night enlists a handsome prince named Tamino to rescue her beautiful kidnapped daughter, Princess Pamina. Aided by the lovelorn bird hunter Papageno and a magical flute that holds the power to change the hearts of men, young Tamino embarks on a quest for true love, leading to the evil Sarastro's temple where Pamina is held captive.

Production of the Munich Opera Festival 2017. The plot of Carl Maria von Weber's romantic fairy opera, which premiered at London's Covent Garden in 1826, is quite astonishing: after the fairy king Oberon has fallen out with his wife Titania, it is humans of all people who are supposed to make things right. Titania will only be reconciled if a human couple proves the truthfulness of their love to the death. Oberon's servant Puck already has someone in mind: the crusader Hüon of Bordeaux, who loves the caliph's daughter Rezia.

A meditation on the female body as a source of both power and pain that focuses on the tragic figure of renowned American-Greek opera singer Maria Callas (1923-77), whose stunning soprano voice captivated audiences around the world in the mid-20th century while her life was wracked by scandal and personal suffering.

Requiring 38 soloists, chorus, and large orchestra, Hans Pfitzner's "Palestrina" is a challenging opera to stage. In Munich, the city in which it was premiered in 1917, director Christian Stückle, conductor Simone Young, and the Bavarian State Opera met those challenges with stunning success.

Wagner's Lohengrin is the mythical tale of the mysterious Knight of the Grail, who appears to defend the princess Elsa - wrongly accused of the murder of her brother. Highlights of Wagner's most lyrical score include the famous Wedding March, which accompanies the marriage of Lohengrin and Elsa. Superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann ("currently the hottest tenor in opera" - The New York Times) makes his role debut in this performance from 2009 and filmed in Munich. He is joined by German soprano Anja Harteros - a former winner of the prestigious Cardiff Singer Of The World competition.

This vivid film of Wagner's romatic opera succeeds in conveying what has famously been called "the wind that blows out at you whenever you open the score", including Daland's boat anchoring against the Sandwike cliffs, the red-sailed phantom ship, and the ghost crew rising from the dead. "Scenes that recall classic horror films... Brilliantly successful" (Nürnberger Nachrichten), "Captures the works' essence" (Süddeutsche Zeitung). With a superb cast; conducted by Wagner authority Wolfgang Sawallisch.

Adaptation of "Der Prinz von Homburg"; recorded at the Bavarian State Opera.

Recorded at Bayerische Staatsoper on March 3-9, 2016.

This new production of Bellinis Norma by Jürgen Rose (sets, costumes, stage direction, and lighting) to honor Edita Gruberovas first staged assumption of the title role was taped in January and February of 2006 in Munich. It does neither the opera nor the soprano any favors. In most ways, its a pretty gloomy affair.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold's "Die tote Stadt" in a Bayerische Staatsoper production from 2019, directed by Simon Stone. Kirill Petrenko is conducting Jonas Kaufmann and Marlis Petersen.

Queen Semiramide is haunted by the ghosts of her past. Together with her lover Assur, she once murdered her husband King Nino; a deed which ever since has weighed heavily upon her. With her marriage to Arsace, she hopes her soul will at last find solace. Her love, however, is misplaced. Arsace not only loves another, he is also, as is later revealed, the son Semiramide and Nino believed to be dead. He is faced with a decision: should he avenge the death of his father – and thus become his mother's killer?

The Snow Queen is Hans Abrahamsen's first opera, composed to a self-penned libretto, based on Hans Christian Andersen's eponymous fairy tale. Following an in-depth study of the topic of snow and a life-long obsession with Andersen's fairy tales, Abrahamsen composed the opera between 2014 and 2018. Hans Abrahamsen's music, with it's smooth transitions and subtly modified repeats, lends the lyrics both depth and lightness. He is keen to point out the range of avenues for interpretation available. " It's possible to read the fairy tale in a variety of ways. It contains many mysteries which are open to numerous interpretations." Accompanying Barbara Hannigan is a top-class ensemble of singers, including Peter Rose, Katarinya Dalayman and Rachael Wilson. Cornelius Meister is the musical director, currently general music director at the Staatsoper Stuttgart.

Nothing is for forever. And people make mistakes. And yet, letting go is the hardest challenge when you're burning with love for the first time and want nothing more than to hold on to it forever. But can you feel as intensely forever as you did in the beginning? Così fan tutte in Benedict Andrews’s new production deals with the exuberant feelings that drive young love in the rush of hormones. Sometimes it touches the fringes of human relationships, where one threatens to lose oneself in the search for intensity. Thus the two young couples, who think they have already discovered the essence of true love, meet two experienced counterparts in Don Alfonso and Despina. An experiment begins in which the men put the fidelity of their partners to the test by playing a game of disguise. What remains is disillusionment. And the possibility of a painful realization: only freedom and the longing for union are certain. Disappointment and rejection are part of the game – because no love is ideal.

In the 2022/23 season, Alexei Ratmansky created a three-part evening for the Bayerisches Staatsballett based on overtures by Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky and Shakespeare's Hamlet, The Tempest and Romeo and Juliet. Ratmansky forms an abstract ballet out of them, in which narrative motifs appear again and again without following a fixed plot. Instead, overture follows overture - each as a new beginning. The result is a multi-layered dialog between music, literature and dance that questions classical ballet in the here and now.