Unlimited
What happens when opera opens its hidden spaces? When the scenery depot becomes the stage, the costume workshop the concert hall, when musical theatre becomes a poetic space and we can encounter each other in a completely different way? When opera knows no boundaries?
With Unlimited, the opera becomes the host. We make surprising connections: between opera and the street, between composition and club culture, between history and radical modernity, between city and opera house. Our program follows curiosity, wherever it leads us: to Berghain for Bára Gísladóttir’s double bass drones, to the cinema with Susanne Kennedy, to the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtniskirche for immersive sound installations. In the Tischlerei – our headquarters – Afrofuturist music theatre merges with Congolese science fiction and spiritual jazz to create a vision of a new society. John Cage asks: What does democracy sound like when everyone plays at once? Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables explore solitude as a shared experience. In the Nachtmusiken, Mozart’s original clavichord meets glowing sewing machines and humanity’s final days – the Letzte Tage der Menschheit.
We celebrate musical theatre as a space for transformative, experimental art. For stories that are warm and still push boundaries. We give a visual artist the key to Deutsche Oper Berlin for two days, and bring together women’s voices from different musical traditions, knowledge keepers and storytellers who lead us to a range of places in Berlin for the new concert series Cantadoras. Our Salons bring astrologers and Stockhausen, Congolese countertenors and sommeliers, together. And when night comes, the stage becomes the floor: the opera exhales and dives into the night in our Late Nights.
Unlimited happens everywhere: In various corners of the opera house, in clubs in Berlin, in galleries, in front of the building and in the foyer. We invite you to dance, to flicker, to debate, to dream, without limits.
Premieres
Sunville > 25.9.26 – 2.10.26
Survivors of the sea, refugees, exiles come together on an island. They create a new society from scratch without the old rules of origin or power. Is it possible to have a community built on love? The hosts for this evening are two intergalactic collaborators: Sun Ra, pioneer of Afrofuturism in response to omnipresent racism, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, who sought to flee the constriction of the art world. Both are fascinated by interplanetary vibrations, read the same spiritual book about love in the 1970s and set the cosmos free. What is true and what is fiction? What is past and what is future? Sunville dives into an uncertain underwater world of the imagination, asking the seemingly simple question: How do we want to live?
Music of Changes > 5.3.27 – 13.3.27
Together with the Berlin-based Zafraan Ensemble, the musically playful and versatile theatre artist Thom Luz and Titus Engel, conductor-in-residence at Deutsche Oper Berlin, have created an evening of musical theatre in which John Cage’s work can be experienced in its entirety: from the surprisingly captivating percussion pieces of his early years, through the more contemplative thinning and dissolution harmonies of his middle period, to the sound meditations of his late works, shaped entirely by chance and the initiative of his own interpretation. More than a century after his birth, Cage’s work still contains one of the most radical musical answers to the most pressing question facing our society: How can we create a structure in which the most diverse sounds can coexist without one sound dominating, controlling, suppressing, reinterpreting or even obliterating another?
Hamed & Sherifa > 30.4.27 – 13.5.27
What would it be like if there were no more injustice in the world? If we were to overcome the power structures that suppress people? If nobody were to destroy the Earth, and if peace finally prevailed? If everybody could live and love as they wished? Exceptional artist Heinrich Horwitz narrates the family opera Hamed & Sherifa by Lebanese composer Zad Moultaka as a look back from a utopian future – a time when all forms of life and love are possible and accepted. It is also a time when all barriers have been overcome, including those between the audience and the stage: When the performance is over, audience members big and small become part of one vibrant community.
Guest Performances
The Alonetimes > 14.10.26 – 16.10.26
The Alonetimes guides six extraordinary performers through a web of memories, times and parallel worlds: a druid by a fire made of broken iPads, two boys at a piano just before a meteorite impact, the voice of a lost love on a walkie-talkie. Scenes like found objects from personal history. For this project, two fascinating and very different composers come together: Jennifer Walshe and Philip Venables explore loneliness in their new music theatre piece – sharpened by constant digital presence, intensified by pandemic and crisis.
The Relatives > 8.11.26
What remains of a family whose home keeps disappearing? ? The Relatives follows the family history of composer Sergej Newski. Based on interviews with his grandmother Anna Timofeevna Kravchenko and unique Super 8 recordings from 1968, the result is a multimedia narration across four generations, from 1912 to the present. The form is radical: a video conference between times and augmented reality as a dramaturgic principle. Interviews and documentary materials transform into a conversation that blurs the lines between past and present.
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
Rirkrit Tiravanija –
Born in Buenos Aires and of Thai descent, he is a visual artist and performer. He lives in New York, Berlin, and Chiang Mai. In his works and installations, Tiravanija combines painting, printmaking, video, photography, and music. Cooking and eating together are also recurring themes. His works have been exhibited at venues including the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the National Gallery of Singapore, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Vienna Secession, and the Fridericianum in Kassel. His works have also been featured at the Venice Biennale, the São Paulo Biennial (2006), and the Whitney Biennial. At the Triennale de Paris in 2011/12, he staged a 12-hour banquet at the Grand Palais titled Soup/No Soup. He is also familiar with opera, having designed the set for Cherkaoui’s production of Hanjo at the Bavarian State Opera (2022/23).
Opening weekend > 29.&30.8.26
Saturday at 12:00 p.m. through Sunday at 6:00 p.m. at and around the Deutsche Oper Berlin
As an extension to the opening production Mittwoch aus Licht and the musical theatre performance Music of Changes, conductor Titus Engel and theatre director Thom Luz are developing a cycle for Unlimited in which they bring Stockhausen and his no less radical contemporary John Cage into dialogue.
John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen embody two radical extremes of their time: Cage sought to obliterate the composer’s ego through chance and Zen philosophy, while Stockhausen, as a master of total control, meticulously organised every detail of his works. Where Cage celebrated silence and non-intention, Stockhausen staged himself as a boundless, complete work of art. Their relationship was complex, characterised by mutual respect, artistic exchange and harsh criticism. Their encounter in Darmstadt became a clash of two seemingly incompatible ways of radically rethinking music, which nevertheless mutually enriched each other. The polarity between them touches upon a timeless social question: What is needed for a society to come together? How much control, chaos, chance and determination does it take?
Wednesday from Light > 19.9.26 – 27.9.26
On the occasion of the new directorship, Deutsche Oper Berlin is venturing to show a project that crashes through boundaries and opens up new spaces: Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht (Wednesday from Light)will be shown as a scenic opera production in the German-speaking world for the first time. Stockhausen, visionary of sound, crafted nothing less than a cosmic theatrum mundi about man and woman, good and evil, birth and death with his monumental cycle LICHT. Die sieben Tage der Woche (LIGHT. The Seven Days of the Week). While other portions of the cycle centre around the struggle between competing forces, the polarity of which reshapes our lives every day, Mittwoch celebrates the utopia of love and the spiritual connection in the spirit of music, as well as the belief that community and solidarity are possible.
Location: Large House
Symphony Concert: Light on Parsifal > 8.9.26
In the context of Mittwoch aus Licht, Titus Engel, for his first concert as conductor-in-residence, connects the musical worlds of Stockhausen and Wagner. Both composers not only shaped the music of their time, but they also polarised opinion, both aesthetically and socially. A mystical aura still surrounds both; religion of art and classical heroic epic are the central elements of their two late works. A few days before the premiere of Mittwoch, the second act of Donnerstag (Thursday) offers insights into another day of the week-long opera cycle. As a purely instrumental section, Michael’s journey around the world traces a hero’s path culminating in his ascension to Heaven. The parallels to Parsifal’s journey, profoundly influenced by Wagner’s affinity for religious spirituality, are evident. John Cage's piece 4′33″ serves as a link and prelude to the quasi-sacred atmosphere, having revolutionised listening through the establishment of the musical pause as a sonic space. The concert marks the opening of the thematic focus on Stockhausen and Cage, co-curated by Titus Engel.
Location: Konzerthaus Berlin
Music of Many > 5.&6.12.26
Cage and Stockhausen meet in a scenic concert in the historic hall of Hamburg Central Station. In the extensive installation We Make Years Out of Hours by Lithuanian artist Lina Lapelytė, the Zafraan Ensemble – as a satellite of the musical theatre Music of Changes – works with singers from the opera ensemble to weave two of the composers’ works together: Cage’s Hymns and Variations (1979) uses the random thinning of religious hymns to illustrate the path “from something to nothing and back again,” while Stockhausen’s instrumental piece Stop (1965) generates an intense, physical experience of presence and energy from abruptly interrupted sound events. Based on these pieces, the installation itself becomes a score. Perception moves to the centre, the boundaries of listening are shifted – for both composers, the most important exercise for the salvation of humanity.
Location: Hamburger Bahnhof – National Gallery of Contemporary Art
Music of Changes > 5.3.27 – 13.3.27
Together with the Berlin-based Zafraan Ensemble, the musically playful and versatile theatre artist Thom Luz and Titus Engel, conductor-in-residence at Deutsche Oper Berlin, have created an evening of musical theatre in which John Cage’s work can be experienced in its entirety: from the surprisingly captivating percussion pieces of his early years, through the more contemplative thinning and dissolution harmonies of his middle period, to the sound meditations of his late works, shaped entirely by chance and the initiative of his own interpretation. In a performance space that bridges the gap between a concert stage and a musical gymnasium, Cage’s compositions and concepts are performed and brought to life: The audience experiences how Cage’s world order, transformed into sound, unfolds on stage and transforms the space. This creates a novel portrait of the composer—and a call to us, the people of today: Enter into resonance, and forget the idea of humanity as the center of power and meaning in creation.
Location: Tischlerei
Music Circus > 12.6.27
John Cage founded the Music Circus in 1967, a musical «happening» in which any number of artists appear in one place at the same time. It is an anarchistic community composition where nobody directs and nobody is at the forefront. The audience itself decides what to listen to and where to move. Titus Engel brings together amateur musicians and professionals from Deutsche Oper Berlin to embark on this radical experiment. «Just let as many things as possible happen simultaneously,» wrote Cage. No hierarchy. No fixed result. What happens when everyone plays at the same time? A circus of possibilities, or: What does democracy sound like?
Location: An open-to-all event – centered around the opera
With productions from London to Tenerife, from Warsaw to New York, Bára Gísladóttir is one of the most in-demand composers of her generation. The winner of the Ernst von Siemens Composer Prize and the Carl Nielsen Talent Award is also a world traveller with regard to genre: Her compositions appealing to the avant-garde New Music and alternative scenes, symphony concerts and indie festivals. Starting with her roots in classical tradition, the Iceland native transcends genres toward the raw sounds of heavy and doom metal, the technoid realms of noise and drone, and the endless horizon of experimental jazz. This multi-perspective aesthetic proves particularly sensitive to the physical aspects of sound. «For me, it’s always about the direct physical impact when the sound literally makes us vibrate from within.»
Gísladóttir understands sounds as dynamic, living entities that are in perpetual motion, and thus in a fluid relation to one another and in relation to their environment. At the core of her music is the profound immersion in sonic spaces to make microcosms visible, and where they can be expanded and tapped as places for experimentation. «When you zoom into a sound, you find an entirely unique cosmos waiting to be explored.» Her work centres equally on the expansion of compositional tools through electro-acoustic elements as well as haptic contact and resonation with the instrument.
As a contrabassist, Gísladóttir performs with the Elja Ensemble, regularly appears as a duo with bass guitarist Skúli Sverrisson and performs her own works as a soloist. One example is Silva, a piece for contrabass and live electronics that has been performed at festivals in Linz, Bratislava, Reykjavik and Huddersfield in the United Kingdom, and is now being shown at Berghain as part of her residency with Deutsche Oper Berlin. At the other end of the spectrum is the ensemble piece Víddir, the German premiere of which will be held at the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin. Víddir—composed in 2019 as a graduation piece for Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen—has already been performed in Aarhus, Helsinki, Ghent, San Diego and Ensenada in Mexico. The Icelandic composer spent about ten years working in Copenhagen after studying in Reykjavik and the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Milan.
Gísladóttir has focused increasingly on interdisciplinary work for several years. For example, she improvised live to the psychedelic nature imagery of the film The Breathing Forest by Wolfgang Lehmann. Her partnership with choreographer Ben J. Riepe brought her to Staatsoper Hannover, Tanzfabrik Köln, tanzhaus nrw in Düsseldorf and Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden. She has designed sound installations for galleries and cooperated with visual artists. In addition, she writes music for theatre, most recently for Benedict Andrews’ Oresteia at the National Theatre of Iceland. Gísladóttir’s first full-length opera will now be shown at Deutsche Oper Berlin.
Silva > 25.11.26
Together with the CTM Festival, Unlimited invites you to Berghain, where Bára Gísladóttir is presenting her one-hour solo work Silva on contrabass. The work combines influences from a range of genres, from experimental music and heavy metal to noise, drone, techno and electronic.
Location: Berghain
At the Movies > 13.1.27
Unlimited brings opera to the cinema: at delphi LUX, artists we encounter during the opera season reveal their secret favourite films, guilty pleasures or cinematic inspirations in the context of opera productions – and introduce them personally.
Location: delphi LUX
Improvisation > 14.1.27
Improvisation as a cornerstone of vibrant musical culture: what formal or harmonic agreements are made to enable free music-making? How do different eras differ in this respect? A celebration of spontaneity from baroque to jazz with composer in residence Bára Gísladóttir.
Location: Tischlerei
Good Vibes Only > 22.1.27 – 12.2.27
A digital labyrinth: tens of thousands of digital posts are created every second worldwide. Posts are made, tweets are written, videos are uploaded. Around two thirds of the global population use social media regularly, and almost half do so daily. A torrent of information rains down on the human brain, forcing it to make decisions on boundless paths through the ever-expanding digital jungle. This heterogeneous crossfire in the endless feed of constantly replenished content forms a maelstrom from which the recipient can hardly escape. Icelandic composer Bára Gísladottir and French author and director Joris Lacoste set out in search of patterns in this multidimensional chaos.
Location: Large house
Víddir > 29.1.27
Originally composed for Grundtvig’s Church in Copenhagen Víddir for nine flutes, three percussionists, bass guitar and contrabass is now celebrating its German premiere at the Gedächtniskirche in Berlin. The work by Bára Gísladóttir transforms the church space into a living body of sound. Like a cocoon, the audience sits in a circle between the instrument groups: the sound wanders, rises, falls and spreads in waves and layers.
Location: Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche
How can the world be saved? “With poetry!” is Mujila’s emphatic response. Literature is not a refuge for the Congolese-Austrian writer, but rather a sonic and political expression of the presence.
Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1981. He studied Literature and Humanities before leaving Lubumbashi in 2007. Since 2009, Mujila has lived in Graz, where he initially worked as a writer-in-residence before teaching African Literature at university. Graz has since become his second home.
Mujila drew international recognition with his debut novel Tram 83 (2014). The book centres on a fictional nightclub in an African metropolis in the early 21st century. There is something uniquely haptic about the text—it is rhythmic, repetitive, rife with interpolations and enumerations. Mujila spent a long time searching for a publisher and was sometimes asked to adapt the text to European reading habits. He refused. His success ultimately proved him right: Tram 83 was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize in 2015 and won the Etisalat Prize for Literature, the Haus der Kulturen der Welt International Literature Award and the Peter Rosegger Literary Prize among others, and has been adapted for the stage multiple times.
In addition to novels, Mujila writes prose and works for theatre, many of which have won awards. For example, he won the German Preis der Literaturhäuser in 2024 with the reasoning: “The texts are permeated with rhythm and music, and his stage appearances are spectacular. He both reads and lives his texts, screaming, crying, lamenting, whispering or singing.”
He himself compares his writing with songs, saying they are meant to be heard. Mujila wants to liberate the words from the prison of the page and make them come to life. “Writing doesn’t allow me to express everything that I want to. I need the mouth, the recitation, to arrive at something akin to the ultimate description.”
This close association between text and music makes Mujila an ideal voice for contemporary musical theatre. For this reason, Deutsche Oper Berlin has invited him for a residency for the 2026/27 season. He will accompany the opera programme with his writing and regularly provide his own perspective.
Among various other contributions, Mujila will write the libretto for and perform in the musical theatre piece Sunville, shed new light on Othello through a production in an Unlimited Salon, and lead a writing studio with his own expertise. Mujila’s work can also be seen outside of the opera house: He will be part of a performance with Sofia Jernberg at the Internationales Literaturfestival Berlin in September 2026, and will present one of his favourite films as part of a cinema partnership with York Kinos towards the end of the season.
Fiston Mwanza Mujila is enriching the opera house with new linguistic dimensions and global perspectives, turning it into a space for the resonance of the present.
Sunville Performance > 10.9.26
Together with singer and composer Sofia Jernberg, Fiston Mwanza Mujila performs excerpts from the libretto of Sunville as part of the International Literature Festival Berlin at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele. The performance is improvised, spontaneous and responsive to the space. A short conversation with both of them follows, covering Afrofuturism, the background of Sunville, and Afro-diasporic art.
As part of the Berlin International Literature Festival
Location: Haus der Berliner Festspiele
Sunville > 25.9.26 – 2.10.26
Survivors of the sea, refugees, exiles, come together on an island. Out of nowhere, they build a new society, without the old rules of origin and power. Can such a thing exist, a community based on love? ... An Afrofuturistic musical theatre piece by Sofia Jernberg, Fiston Mwanza Mujila and Stephanie Thiersch.
Location: Tischlerei
At the Movies > 4.11.26
Unlimited brings opera to the cinema: in one of the auditoriums at delphi Lux, artists we encounter during the opera season will present their secret favourite films, guilty pleasures or cinematic inspirations in the context of opera productions – and introduce them personally.
Location: delphi LUX
Unlimited Salon: Otello > 6.4.27
Fiston Mwanza Mujila will introduce Giuseppe Verdi's Otello from his own perspective with a performance of his own.
Location: Foyer
Atelier > 5.4.27
A writing workshop led by Fiston Mwzanza Mujila.
Location: Foyer
Kasala pour mon Kaku > 9.&11.4.27
Fiston Mwanza Mujila meets the musicians of the BigBand at Jazz & Lyrics. His rhythmically carried lyrics merge with jazz improvisation – a dialogue between Congolese poetry and the Afro-diasporic roots of jazz.
Location: Tischlerei
| The Poet-in-Residence Programme is made possible by the generous support of |
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What can a voice be? Ritual, resistance, myth and knowledge keeper? Visionary, memory and healing? The new series Cantadoras brings together outstanding women artists who radically pose this question, each in their own way, tradition and practice. Various vocal techniques meet improvisation and performance, spiritual practice meets political resistance, centuries-old traditions meet progressive sonic art. In the first season, the new concert series by Unlimited combines overtone singing from Tuva, Persian vocal traditions from Iran, music from Karnataka, Ukrainian polyphonic singing and Ethiopian-Swedish vocal art.
Sofia Jernberg > 27.10.26
The celebrated Ethiopian-Swedish soprano, performer and composer moves between contemporary composition, noise, free jazz and experimental vocal art. Her voice ranges five octaves, from guttural growls to crystalline overtones, from microtonal glissandi to percussive sonic explosions. An instrument of resistance and exploration – wild, precise, unpredictable.
Location: Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Derya Yıldırım > 18.12.26
Derya Yıldırım’s solo programme brings Anatolian folk music to the big stages, not as folklore but as a living art form. She accompanies herself on the bağlama uses her music to tell stories of migration, resistance and identity.
Location: Tischlerei
Sainkho Namtchylak & HMOT > 23.1.27
The Tuvan singer is one of the most radical voices today. She uses overtone singing (khoomei) in which multiple tones are made simultaneously, as well as traditional laryngeal techniques. Her voice transcends the borders between 3000 years of old Tuvan tradition and noise-avant garde, between language and sound. In Cantadoras she meets with Siberian-born Bashkir sound artist Stas Shärifullá, also known as HMOT.
Location: Tischlerei
Golnar Shahyar & Atena Esthiaghi > 19.3.27
In her work, the Iranian singer and composer Golnar Shahyar combines voice, language and body to establish a politically and poetically charged practice. Together with cellist Atena Eshtiaghi, she creates open sound spaces of traditional, experimental music where vulnerability, resistance and the question of raising one’s own voice can be experienced sensorily.
Location: Tischlerei
Mariana Sadovska > 11.6.27
The Ukrainian singer dives into archaic and polyphonic singing traditions: quick interval jumps, ritual calling songs (голосіння/holosinnya), complex rhythms of koliada songs. She combines these with electronic sounds and field recordings. Her voice tells of ritual practices that were passed on orally for centuries and now sound new and more urgent than ever.
Location: Berliner Ensemble
When the opera closes its doors and the lights go off in the foyer, the house’s hidden rooms come to life – the dressmaking studio between glowing sewing machines, the backstage between storing curtains, the Tischlerei in dim light. Baritone Georg Nigl opens up these secret spaces for three intimate encounters between song and text.
Mozart's Clavichord > 5.&6.12.26
For the first time since 1842, Mozart’s clavichord is leaving Salzburg. His own instrument where he composed, dreamed and doubted. Between humming sewing machines in costume, the music from Papageno to the poor Violet suddenly becomes real, as though Mozart only just left the room.
With August Diehl (recitation) and Alexander Gergelyfi (clavichord).
Location: In the sewing studio
Breath Line – An Approach to Käthe Kollwitz > 13.&14.2.27
«I can scarcely believe that any art form penetrates as deeply as music,» writes Käthe Kollwitz about Schubert. What happens if her words meet his songs? A dialogue between two artists who never spoke to each other, and yet understand one another.
With Nina Hoss (recitation) and Olga Pashchenko (piano).
Location: In the stage magazine
The Last Days of Mankind > 20.6.27
Karl Kraus’ apocalyptic chronology of the First World War meets Mahler’s riven sounds and Eisler’s sharp tones. Music and language are woven into a mirror that reflects our modern day. What does the end sound like? Will we recognise it?
With Nicholas Ofczarek (recitation) and Bendix Dethleffsen (piano).
Location: Tischlerei
The Tischlerei concerts are the heart of chamber music at the Tischlerei. Musicians themselves decide: What moves us? What do we want to share? Inspired by new productions on the opera stage and in the Tischlerei, six evenings that bring together familiar and obscure works have been crafted. These concerts are personal, unexpected, vibrant and the secret passions of the orchestra. Music for heart and mind. Six evenings at the Tischlerei. Come by and hear what moves our musicians.
Against forgetfulness > 7.10.26
Forgotten life stories of musicians persecuted during National Socialism who once played at the opera, and outstanding music that will now be played once more: from Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Aribert Reimann to Miloslav Kabeláč and Werner Richard Heymann. An evening against forgetting.
Culture Clash > 30.11.26
Confrontation or inspiration? Where do traditions meet, and where do they clash? An evening of musical encounters, overlaps, cores – and appropriation. With works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Antonín Dvořák, Béla Bartók and Hilda Paredes.
Improvisation > 14.1.27
Improvisation as a pillar of living music culture: What formal or harmonic agreements are made to make the free playing of music possible? How do various eras differ in this regard? A celebration of spontaneity from Baroque to jazz with composer-in-residence Bára Gísladóttir.
LOL > 1.3.27
Isn’t that funny? Laughter is social interaction and has many counterparts in music, from the absurd to the subversive. If only we found humour in the same things. An evening with the orchestra academy members.
Is it Love? > 7.4.27
The many facets of love. We explore the multifaceted nature of love in music: obsessive, tender, destructive, unattainable. From the first encounter to infatuation and the final parting. An evening of words and music about love.
Britannia > 19.5.27
On the occasion of War Requiems we explore Benjamin Britten’s musical world. What influences shaped his creations? What makes his colour palette so unique? From Purcell to Britten, an island journey through the centuries.
For over ten years, the Deutsche Oper Berlin BigBand’s jazz series at the Tischlerei has provided special musical encounters in an intimate setting. Each concert combines jazz with lyrics, poetry or insight into the lives of important composers and jazz legends.
Curated and presented by BigBand members Rüdiger Ruppert, Sebastian Krol and Guntram Halder.
Two of a Kind > 23.&25.10.26
Bob Brookmeyer and Clark Terry – two exceptional musicians whose creative partnership established an unmistakable sound that combines humour, virtuosity and compositional sophistication. The music from one of the most exciting partnerships in jazz history.
The Jazziversum > 21.&22.11.26
What does the Big Bang of jazz sound like? A musical and scientific journey through the history of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to today. 90 minutes between astrophysics and improvisation. World premiere!
Special mit Tom Hickox > 13.12.26
British singer-songwriter Tom Hickox presents songs from his album The Orchestra of Stories with musicians from the BigBand and the Deutsche Oper Berlin orchestra. A special concert.
Kasala pour mon Kaku > 9.&11.4.27
Fiston Mwanza Mujila, poet-in-residence for 2026/27, meets musicians from the BigBand. His rhythmically driven texts meld with jazz improvisations. A dialogue between Congolese poetry and jazz’s roots in the African diaspora.
Les Grandes Dames du Jazz > 14.&16.5.27
Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday – great jazz singers who combined outstanding vocal art with resistance. Stories from their lives and reinterpretations of their most famous songs.
The Unlimited Salon is providing experimental access to the opera material. Whether a famous Berlin astrologer looks to the stars with Stockhausen and Sun Ra, we combine wine with arias or are holding a workshop on digital detox. We look at opera from viewpoints based in real life. And, of course, there’s a drink on the house.
Sunville > 21.9.26
The Flying Dutchman > 13.10.26
Good Vibes Only > 12.1.27
Così fan tutte > 17.2.27
Otello > 6.4.27
Our poet-in-residence, the exceptional Congolese-Austrian artist, performer, and writer Fiston Mwanza Mujila, will introduce Otello from his own perspective with a special performance.
War Requiem > 8.6.27
Unlimited is taking the opera to the cinema: At one of the auditoriums at delphi Lux, artists whom we are meeting this opera season will show their secret favourite films, guilty pleasures or cinematic inspirations in the context of opera productions – and will personally present them. All in line with our season motto Make Love …
with Susanne Kennedy > 30.9.26
To mark the opening of the new season at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Susanne Kennedy is staging Stockhausen’s Mittwoch aus Licht—an opera that turns consciousness itself into a stage. For the Im Kino series, she has chosen David Lynch’s Inland Empire.
with Fiston Mwanza Mujila > 4.11.26
Fiston Mwanza Mujila is Poet in Residence at the Deutsche Oper Berlin for the season 26/27 and a part of the Afrofuturist music theater Sunville at the Tischlerei. He has chosen Neptune Frost as his film for the At the Movies series.
with Bára Gísladóttir > 13.1.27
Bára Gísladóttir is Composer in Residence for the 26/27 season at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the composer of the world premiere Good Vibes Only. For the At the Movies series, she has chosen Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite.
with Maxime Pascal > 3.2.27
Maxime Pascal, Principal Guest Conductor of the Deutsche Oper, will conduct Stockhausen’s Wednesday from Light this season and lead the symphonic concert Turangalîla – Messiaen’s overwhelming ode to love, inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde: love as a cosmic force, insatiable and boundless. For his film, he has chosen Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke: the same questions, a dying forest, no easy answers.
with Kornél Mundruczó > 24.3.27
Kornél Mundruczó brings Verdi’s Otello, based on Shakespeare’s play, to the Deutsche Oper – a production that takes the audience directly into the inner world of a man consumed by jealousy and guilt. His film selection: Michael Haneke’s Caché. What is repressed does not disappear.
with Dr. Aviel Cahn > 30.6.27
Aviel Cahn concludes his first season as artistic director of the Deutsche Oper with Derek Jarman’s War Requiem – the film adaptation of the same work by Benjamin Britten that is also being performed on the opera stage this season.
On the Late Nights, the stage becomes a dance floor, voices mix together, the foyers become open floors. We connect with partners from the Berlin club scene and question the opera from the perspective of the night: What does it mean to be together when the order shifts? The night is open, come out and dance! Before the party, there is a musical theatre intervention: Students from the Musikhochschule Hanns Eisler form a rapid response team and search for answers to the question of how opera can respond to our breathless present.
29.8.26
As part of the opening weekend
Location: To be announced
26.2.27
As part of the new production of Good Vibes Only
Location: Large house
2.7.27
At the end of the season
Location: Foyer
Make love... to the night: After select performances, where we invite the audience to dress up as they wish, the Deutsche Oper Berlin foyer becomes an extravagant chill-out party lounge. Elegant, maybe even glamorous, with a DJ, drinks and jazz so that the evening can continue.
after Carmen > 9.10.26
after La bohème > 11.12.26
after Rigoletto > 19.2.27
after Antikrist > 21.5.27