My dear people of Berlin,
When I was invited to envision the opening of the 2026/27 season at Deutsche Oper Berlin, I didn’t want to think of the conventional opening weekend. Instead, I asked myself what it could mean to truly open up the house: for time, for the people of the city and for the many types of creating and doing without which the opera could not even exist.

NUR WENN DIE MENSCHEN HIER LEBEN – «Unless the people live here» – takes the idea of the total work of art to broaden the perspective beyond the stage. Opera has always been a collective endeavour – supported by musicians and singers, costume designers and technicians, ushers, administrators, building services staff and many others whose work usually becomes invisible once the curtain rises. This project is based on the conviction that all these elements are equally important and that the opera house itself can be understood as a living system, characterised by collaboration and care.

The theatre, open for 30 hours to mark the beginning of the season, unfolds as an open structure, accessible and in flux day and night. Over the weekend, Berlin-based artists will engage the building with site-specific interventions that extend throughout the entire structure. They will work on the stages as well as in workshops, foyers and offices, kitchens and technical areas. The aim is not to transform the opera house into something else, but rather to bring its internal processes to the forefront.

Deutsche Oper Berlin was founded as an opera house FOR THE PEOPLE, and this history is significant in each of these interventions. The house is not simply a curtain or merely a stage, but an active participant. While you move through the building, you can encounter moments that seem familiar, and others that undergo a subtle shift. There is no set path through the weekend, nor any expectation to see everything. What matters is the time that you spend here.

I hope you will join us during the last weekend in August, be it for a brief visit or a longer period, letting the time spent together take shape while you move through the building. After we have spent the weekend together: What might stay with you after you leave? What will change when the mechanisms of communal life become visible?
Until then, Rirkrit Tiravanija