We are delighted to present today the plans for the first season of our new Intendant, Aviel Cahn, and his artistic management team: chief dramaturg Beate Breidenbach and Elisa Erkelenz, head of Unlimited.
The opening weekend of the season and at the same time the new Unlimited series will take place on 29th-30th August. The events will be curated by visual artist and performer Rirkrit Tiravanija, combining the stamp of important Berlin associated artists with the musicians, singers and various spaces of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. Petrit Halilaj and Álvaro Urbano will launch a costumed parade, Sung Tieu will come to Berlin straight from the Venice Art Biennale, and Anri Sala will work with musicians from the orchestra. Tomás Saraceno and Omsk Social Club will also be present with on-site activities. The venue will be open to the public from 12pm on Saturday to 6pm on Sunday, with the stage transformed into a club during the night.
The first of seven premieres on the main stage follows on 19th September: the German premiere of Karlheinz Stockhausen's monumental work Mittwoch aus Licht. While other parts of the LICHT cycle focus on the battle between the conflicting forces whose polarity rules our lives, Mittwoch celebrates the utopia of love and spiritual connection found in music. For Mittwoch aus Licht Maxime Pascal, closely associated with the company as Principal Guest Conductor and a passionate advocate of Stockhausen's music, will work with his own ensemble Le Balcon, soloists from the orchestra, and the choir of Deutsche Oper Berlin. The director will be Susanne Kennedy, a well-known figure in Berlin, whose works have been performed at the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz and at the Theatertreffen (Fegefeuer in Ingolstadt and Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?). Her production of Einstein on the Beach has been performed both at international festivals and also in Berlin as a co-production with the Berliner Festspiele.
Just a month later, on 24th October, we invite you to a second new production: Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer, directed by Milo Rau and conducted by Giedrė Šlekytė. Tomasz Konieczny sings the title role and Aušrine Stundytė makes her debut as Senta. The controversial theatre-maker Milo Rau is tackling Richard Wagner's work for the first time. He uses the romantic opera as the starting point for a journey into the political depths of the German Federal Republic, and its long struggle with guilt, memory and the search for reconciliation.
For families, from 15th November we present Jonathan Dove's music theatre piece In 80 Tagen um die Welt (Around the World in 80 Days), inspired by Jules Verne's world-famous classic. The director is Peter Lund, who also wrote the libretto. The production, created for Opernhaus Zürich, will be revived with singers from our own ensemble under the musical direction of our new Kapellmeister, Giovanni Conti.
The world premiere of Good Vibes Only by young Icelandic composer Bára Gísladóttir, winner of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation award, will take place on 22nd January 2027. Dealing with themes of social media culture, it is likely to be a challenging discovery. The director and librettist is Joris Lacoste, already well known at festivals in France and Belgium, but yet to be discovered in Germany. Titus Engel, Conductor in Residence and experienced in realising complex world premieres, will conduct. We are delighted that Bára Gísladóttir will also introduce herself to the public as Composer in Residence with concerts at Berghain and the Gedächtniskirche, among others, and that she will devise further programmes.
Mozart's Cosi fan tutte returns to the Deutsche Oper repertoire on 28th February 2027 in a new production by theatre collective FC Bergman. Under the direction of Mozart specialist Riccardo Minasi, a lively ensemble led by Elsa Dreisig as Fiordiligi and Patrizia Ciofi as Despina will explore the psychological facets of this multi-layered play about love. The Belgian theatre collective FC Bergman won the Silver Lion at the Venice Theatre Biennale 2023, and most recently enjoyed a resounding success at the Ruhrtriennale with Guernica Guernica. Their theatrical language, leaning towards visually stunning surrealism, will now be seen in Berlin for the first time.
Othello: surely no other character in world literature encompasses so many tragic contradictions. He is both perpetrator and victim, hunter and prey – bloodthirsty murderer of his beloved Desdemona, but also at the mercy of the demonic manipulative urges of his secret adversary, Iago. Theatre and opera director Kornél Mundruczó, recently represented in competition at the Berlinale Film Festival, also specialises in psychodrama as a filmmaker. In Verdi’s Otello he leads us directly into the psychotic abyss of the protagonist. The conductor is Stefano Montanari, a specialist in earlier Italian opera, who recently proved his flair for Verdi's late work with an acclaimed Otello at the Staatsoper Stuttgart. The title role will be sung by Najmiddin Mavlyanov, celebrated worldwide for his dramatic tenor roles in Italian and Russian repertoire. The premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s masterpiece is on 16th April 2027.
The last premiere on the main stage, on 18th June 2027, is Britten's War Requiem. Produced by Daniel Kramer with stage design by the outstanding photographer Wolfgang Tillmans, the staging combines Kramer's poetic, powerful physicality with Tillmans' unconventional worldly gaze. Together they create timeless situations where trauma and consolation, multitude and intimacy have their place. Under the musical direction of Britten connoisseur Sir Donald Runnicles, a symbolic cast was planned for the world premiere with a Russian soprano, a British tenor and a German baritone. This plan has been fulfilled, with soprano Elena Tsallagova, tenor Nicky Spence and baritone Björn Bürger.
The audience is also invited to four symphony concerts, three conducted by conductors with special ties to the company – Titus Engel, Maxime Pascal and Michele Spotti – and one by Jonathan Nott. They offer original programmes also featuring works seldom heard elsewhere.
Unlimited – the new genre
In Unlimited, we are establishing a new programme line celebrating music theatre, and the Deutsche Oper as an open space, breaking boundaries between genres, locations and audiences. Its programme structure consists of five independent series: Cantadoras, Nachtmusiken, Late Nights, Im Kino and the Unlimited Salon. Our focus is the existence of different perspectives on a topic, for example from our Poet in Residence Fiston Mwanza Mujila, who comes from the Congo; or female singers from Ukraine, Iran and Turkey, in our Cantadoras series, which gives women's voices a platform in the context of diverse musical traditions. Unlimited also offers space for a broader collaboration with the Berlin cultural scene.
For the new production Sunville, Fiston Mwanza Mujila takes us to the 'Second World' – a zone where African cosmology, Black science fiction, and biting satire inspired by Afrofuturism collide. Sometimes we need to have a good laugh before we can carry on dreaming. The Ethiopian-Swedish composer and singer Sofia Jernberg joins Mujila on stage alongside other musicians. Sunville poses the seemingly simple question: how do we want to live? The production, directed by Stephanie Thiersch, is a co-production with the Wiener Festwochen and the Voices Berlin Festival and premieres at the Tischlerei on 25th September.
Together with the Berlin Zafraan Ensemble, theatre-maker Thom Lutz, renowned for his artistic versatility, and Titus Engel present a music theatre evening, Music of Changes. Here the work of John Cage can be experienced in all its breadth: the rousing percussion pieces of his early years, the more thoughtful thinning and dissolving harmonies of his middle period, and the sound meditations of his late work, shaped entirely by chance and the initiative of their interpreters.The premiere will take place on 5th March 2027 in the Tischlerei. At the same time Lutz and Engel are developing a cycle where they bring Karlheinz Stockhausen into dialogue with John Cage of which this production is a centrepiece.
We are also greatly looking forward to a new production for children, Zad Moultaka's Hamed & Sherifa, which will premiere on 30th April 2027 under the direction of Heinrich Horwitz.
There will also be guest performances of music theatre productions on tour, concerts in the Tischlerei and at other city venues such as the Gedächtniskirche and Berghain... take some time to browse through the broad Unlimited programme, discover some rare gems, and make sure you don't miss anything.
From now on, we will be using a motto for each season to make our content and vision more recognisable. Our motto for 26-27, ‘Make Love...’, is a reference to our times and the challenges they present, also inviting you to complete the well-known 1960s slogan in your own way – playfully, humorously and giving space to your creative thoughts. The illustrations, which humorously open up further associations, were developed by Parisian illustrator Olga Prader. Particularly in challenging times, we are convinced that the opera is more important than ever as a place of community – a place where we can come together, and immerse ourselves in utopian worlds at the same time.
With this in mind, we look forward to the 2026-27 season’s rich programme with its many new features, and eagerly await your journalistic support. See you soon at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.