Salome - Jochanaan - Staatsoper Hamburg
2025-10-12 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Staatsoper Hamburg, Dammtorstraße 28, Hamburg, 20354, Germany
Under the face of the wandering moon, spirit and body quarrel in all their greatness and wretchedness until the blood of two bodies flows. Strauss remains close to Wilde’s re-creation of the biblical material, which leads Salome from her mother’s tool to autonomy. It is she who, in her unfulfilled desire for the liberatingly different, the body of the prophet Jochanaan, seeks revenge and demands his head – a price the male-dominated society around Herod is willing to pay for their dance. Now that Salome holds his severed head in her hands, she can kiss Jochanaan, possess him if not alive, then dead. As if under a burning glass, Strauss pours Oscar Wilde’s demonic dramaturgy into sound like an eruption of the psyche, accompanying his protagonist from her failed escape from the decadence of her existence to her death.
Production: Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes: Elena Zaytseva
Lighting: Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy: Tatiana Verestchagina, Janina Zell
In German language with German and English surtitles
Supported by the Foundation for the promotion of the Hamburg State Opera

Gunter · Richard Strauss: Salome ROH

Don Giovanni - Title Role - Metropolitan Opera
2025-11-06 19:30 - 23:00, 2025-11-11 19:30 - 23:00, 2025-11-15 13:00 - 16:30, 2025-11-19 19:30 - 23:00, 2025-11-22 20:00 - 23:30 (America/New_York) | Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts: Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY, NY 10023, United States
World premiere: National Theater (now Estates Theater), Prague, 1787. Aided by his ingenious librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart approached his operatic retelling of the Don Juan myth from a point of view that is neither tragic nor entirely comic, but rather lighthearted, urbane, and ironic. We follow the title character and his earthy comic sidekick, Leporello, through a series of encounters that begins with a fatal duel, moves back and forth between the humorous and the sentimental, and ends with the protagonist being dragged down to hell.

Philharmonia Orchestra · Don Giovanni: Overture

A Madison Symphony Christmas
2025-12-05 19:30 - 21:00, 2025-12-06 19:30 - 21:00, 2025-12-07 14:30 - 16:00 (America/Chicago) | Overture Center for the Arts, 201 State Street, Madison, WI, 53703, United States
This spectacular annual celebration has become a joyful way to begin the holiday season in our community for concertgoers of all ages. It’s no wonder that Maestro DeMain is bringing two of his favorite soloists, soprano Alexandra LoBianco and bass-baritone Kyle Ketelsen, to share their gifts, for his 32nd season. The Madison Symphony Chorus, Madison Youth Choirs, and the Mt. Zion Gospel Choir join us to bring this special concert to life. You’ll experience the same blend of familiar and new once again this year. The experience starts with caroling in the lobby with the Chorus before each performance to set the mood. Bring your family and friends to share this beloved Madison tradition with us!

Faust - Méphistophélès - Bayerische Staatsoper
2026-02-08 18:00 - 21:00 (Europe/Berlin), 2026-02-13 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin), 2026-02-16 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin), 2026-02-19 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin), 2026-02-22 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin), 2026-02-27 19:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles), 2026-02-27 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin), 2026-07-24 19:00 - 22:00 (Europe/Berlin) | Bavarian State Opera, Max-Joseph-Platz 2, Munich, Munich, 80539, Germany
On his futile search for the meaning of life, the ageing scholar Faust makes a pact with the Devil. Méphistophélès buys his soul and promises him eternal youth and love. Faust falls in love with Marguerite, however she soon leaves him. After she has killed their child, Marguerite succumbs to madness, but emerges morally superior from the encounter with Faust.
Of the numerous scorings of the most famous material in the history of German literary, the opera by the Frenchman Charles Gounod is perhaps the best known. In the 19th century the French opera developed an immense fondness for the German material, but it was often very free with the restructuring for the libretto. From the original the successful French librettist duo, Michel Carré and Jules Barbier (also the authors of the text of Les Contes d’Hoffmann) actually made a most effective opera text with a pronounced dramaturgy of contrasts – drinking scenes are contrasted with intimate ballads, soldier choirs with the church service hymns of supplication. Not least of all because of its immortal arias, after Bizet’s Carmen, Gounod’s Faust has become the most successful French opera.

www.gbopera.it · Charles Gounod (1818-1893): “Faust” (1859)

Orest - Elektra - Staatsoper Hamburg
2026-04-14 19:30 - 21:30, 2026-04-19 15:00 - 17:00, 2026-05-01 19:30 - 21:30, 2026-05-08 19:30 - 21:30 (Europe/Berlin) | Ontario
The Gründerzeit: In this bourgeois family, no one will find salvation. Their lives become a living hell. Elektra – the first part of the Strauss trilogy designed for the Hamburg State Opera by director Dmitri Tcherniakov – is a psychological exploration of the self-destruction of a family clan. Tcherniakov’s shift in focus from myth to family is no accident: Strauss saw a spoken theater production of the ancient myth in 1903, a free adaptation by Hofmannsthal, who subsequently became his brilliant librettist for six operas. Even in their debut work, Strauss and Hofmannsthal dissected what lurked behind the bourgeois facade of Viennese refinement in their time: the abyss. Revenge against Elektra and Orestes’ father will destroy them all.
The tragedy premiered on January 25, 1909, at the Royal Opera in Dresden. The Hamburg production premiered on November 28, 2021.

The first part of director Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Strauss trilogy is a psychological exploration of the self-destruction of a family clan. The shift in focus from ancient myth to family is no accident: Strauss and Hofmannsthal, in their debut work premiered in Dresden in 1909, already dissected what lurks behind the bourgeois facade of the Gründerzeit era: the abyss.

jessicaphillipsclarinet · Strauss “Elektra”

Orest - Elektra - San Francisco Opera
2026-06-07 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-06-11 19:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-14 14:00 - 16:00, 2026-06-19 19:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-23 19:30 - 21:30, 2026-06-27 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Ontario
Grief. Obsession. Vengeance.
In a brutal world where revenge is enacted with the axe, Klytämnestra has murdered her husband Agamemnon. Their daughter Elektra is consumed by her grief and is fixated on vengeance against her mother. Justice must be served.
San Francisco Opera’s production, praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as “extraordinary” and “stunning,” brings us to a modern-day museum and an exhibit on Elektra. A young woman grappling with her own life is pulled into the ancient narrative in this ingenious production by Keith Warner—a taut psychological thriller in which the past and the present become one.
Music Director Eun Sun Kim conducts Richard Strauss’ expressionist masterpiece, replete with one of the largest orchestras in the repertoire. The intense emotions of this Greek tragedy are rendered on a vast scale by Strauss’ massive soundscape and a score that winds up the dramatic tension with an intensity that can only lead to one horrific outcome.

jessicaphillipsclarinet · Strauss “Elektra”

Recital with Carrie-Ann Matheson & SFO Merola Artists - Schwabacher Recital Series
2026-06-16 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Barbro Osher Recital Hall, SFCM’s Bowes Center 200 Van Ness Ave., 11th Floor, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Schwabacher Recital Series
Presented by Merola Opera Program & San Francisco Opera Center
The Schwabacher Recital Series offers you the opportunity to hear gifted singers in an up-close and intimate setting. Since 1983, these recitals have featured renowned Merola alumni and have also been instrumental in launching the careers of internationally acclaimed artists.

Der Freischütz - Kaspar/Samiel - Bayerische Staatsoper
2026-07-26 18:00 - 20:15, 2026-07-29 19:00 - 21:15 (Europe/Berlin) | Bavarian State Opera, Max-Joseph-Platz 2, Munich, Munich, 80539, Germany
In a village community that holds firm to archaic customs, the young hunter Max must pass a marksmanship test so he may marry his sweetheart, Agathe. Of all times now when his shooting has been very much below par! Carl Maria von Weber and his librettist Friedrich Kind fluctuate between ghost story, fairy tale, fortune play and interplay between heaven and hell. The plot centres around a diabolical ritual in the “Wolf’s Glen”, where a pact is made with Samiel to cast magic bullets that never miss their target. Its composer declared that the opera was celebrated by its world premiere audience in Berlin in 1821 with the, “most incredible enthusiasm”. In the decades that followed, the piece, at the time considered nature-oriented and traditional-romantic, swiftly became one of the most performed operas on German stages. And little wonder it was: In an age with a popular yearning for cultural, national identification opportunities, Der Freischütz offered a projection surface for an ideal community. So what about this opera appeals to director Dmitri Tcherniakov today?

ChicagoSymphony · Weber: Overture to Der Freischütz
