Marie Antoinette
(September 2011)
The subject matter of this ballet is rooted in both Austrian and French history. It tells the story of the tragic life of Marie Antoinette, the youngest daughter of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresia, who married Louis XVI. and became Queen of France, and lost her life on the scaffold during the...
Max und Moritz
(October 2011)
For the stage adaptation of the 1865 comic strip of Wilhelm Busch, Edmund Gleede chose compositions (ballet music and overtures) by Gioacchino Rossini, a contemporary of the author. Wildly successful upon its world-premiere in Munich in 1984, "Max und Moritz" has since been produced on more than ...
Le Concours
(January 2012)
Maurice Béjarts dance spectacle satirises the often cruel (for the participants) procedures at ballet competitions. At the competition in this ballet, there is even a murder. While the competition continues normally, investigations are commenced in the rhythm of a crime thriller through a series...
Junge Talente des Wr. Staatsballetts
(March 2012)
Recognising the talent of dancers, and providing them with the appropriate encouragement, is a major task of any ballet company. This evening gives these exceptionally gifted young people the opportunity to try out roles in which they have not yet been able to appear in the current repertoire. T...
Rusalka
from Antonín Dvorák (March 2012)
The water nymph Rusalka becomes human because she has fallen in love with the prince. But the stakes are high: she has been struck dumb, and she must win the unconditional devotion of her beloved. The prince returns her love, but her cool manner alienates him. Soon he turns to another woman. The...
 in seinem Zimmer©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=115.7)
Antonia und der Reißteufel
from Christian Kolonovits (June 2012)
Since the Little Devil's heart has been possessed by the ugly time-eater, he has had to draw his energy from the stolen voices of children. But Antonia does not want to sing for him! And when his great aunt, the "Urstrumpftante", returns to knit the all-knowing Great Sock, the Little Devil's life...
, Maria Happel (Anhilte)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=88.9)
, Robert Wörle (Hexe), Daniela Fally (Gretel)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=144.9)
Hänsel und Gretel
from Engelbert Humperdinck (December 2011)
In this well known opera based on the Grimm's fairy tale, Hänsel and Gretel are sent into the woods by their mother who scolds them for playing instead of doing household chores. They lose their way and must spend the night in the woods. Upon waking they find a house made of sweets surrounded by ...
Die lustige Witwe
from Franz Lehár (September 2011)
As the year 1905 came to an end, "The Merry Widow" celebrated its world premiere and thereafter proceeded to win over audiences all over the world. The love story of Hanna Glawari and Danilo Danilowitsch has never gone out of fashion. Marco Arturo Marelli, whose international career began at the ...
©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=17.2)
Das Land des Lächelns
from Franz Lehár (February 2012)
Lisa, daughter from a good Vienna family, falls in love with the Chinese prince Sou-Chong. The couple want to lead their life as a couple in China, but the cultural differences are soon revealed as unsurmountable and their love fails as a consequence. The prince is ultimately left only to conclud...
, Katharina Straßer (Eliza Doolittle)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=9.6)
My Fair Lady
from Frederick Loewe (January 2012)
With their 1956 broadway musical "My Fair Lady" Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's melodies "The Rain in Spain" or "I could have danced all night" went round the world. The story tells of phonetician Henry Higgins who turns penniless flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a society lady. The profess...
, Mehrzad Montazeri (Don José)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=32.9)
Carmen
from Georges Bizet (October 2011)
According to the beautiful and tempestuous Carmen, love is a rebellious bird, here today and gone tomorrow. Don José, loved by the peasant girl Micaëla, is bewitched by Carmen and although she temporarily encourages his advances, she soon becomes bored by him. While attending the bull fight of th...
Madama Butterfly
from Giacomo Puccini (November 2011)
Nagasaki, early 1900s, the American naval officer Lt F. B. Pinkerton marries the young Cio-Cio-San, known as Butterfly. While he is only looking for temporary pleasure, Butterfly renounces both family and religion for him. He returns to America, unaware of the child she has conceived. After three...
La Cenerentola (Aschenbrödel)
from Gioachino Rossini (January 2012)
Gioacchino Rossini transformed the material of the Grimm fairytale of Cinderella into a feather-light bel canto parable about the victory of virtue over pride. In 1997, director Achim Freyer and designer Maria-Elena Amos produced this charming opera buffa at the Volksoper, turning it into a "magi...
©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=152.4)
Rigoletto
from Giuseppe Verdi (September 2011)
Verdi's seventeenth opera, along with the two other works of his "popular trilogy" ("Il Trovatore", "La Traviata"), enabled the composer to finally ascend to universal world fame. Director Stephen Langridge and designer Richard Hudson have set the action in a world in which absolute power and gla...
, Marina Rebeka (Violetta Valéry)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=31.5)
La Traviata
from Giuseppe Verdi (February 2012)
The well known tragic love story between the high-class coutesan Violetta and Alfredo, son of a respected Parisian family. With Alfredo the beautiful high-class courtesan Violetta finally finds true love. After a brief spell of happiness enjoyed together Alfredo's father manages, nevertheless, to...
Das Wundertheater / Der Bajazzo
from Hans Werner Henze, Ruggero Leoncavallo (March 2012)
How much does theatre have to do with reality? What truths are conveyed to us by the events on the stage and the reactions of the audience? Hans Werner Henzes "Wundertheater" of 1964, based on an Intermezzo by Miguel de Cervantes, and Ruggero Leoncavallos "verismo" opera "Pagliacci" of 1892 pos...
Hello, Dolly!
from Jerry Herman (September 2011)
Dolly Gallagher Levi from Yonkers is half way between the "Merry Widow" and a "Barber"-type factotum. As a marriage broker, she has made herself indispens-able, finding the right partner for everyone. And in the end, for herself too. It is useless for the wealthy Horace Vandergelder to resist - D...
 Josef Luftensteiner (Falk), Daniela Fally (Adele), Dietmar Kerschbaum (Gabriel von Eisenstein), Edith Lienbacher (Rosalinde), Ulrike Beimpold (Ida), Daniel Schmutzhard (Dr. Falke), Andrea Bönig (Prinz Orlofsky)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=66.9)
Die Fledermaus
from Johann Strauß (September 2011)
This quintessential Viennese operetta deserves to be enjoyed throughout the year, and not just on New Year's Eve. Eisenstein evades a summons to serve a brief prison sentence by accepting Falke's invitation to Prince Orlowsky's party. His wife's former beau Alfred is escorted to jail in his place...
Madame Pompadour
from Leo Fall (June 2012)
Leo Falls operetta, first performed in 1922 in Berlin, concerns the historic figure of Marquise Pompadour, mistress of the French King Louis XV. With its daring satiric elements and some potential hit numbers such as "Heut könnt einer sein Glück bei mir machen" [Today, someone may find happine...
Candide
from Leonard Bernstein (January 2012)
Voltaires satire "Candide" was publicly burned in Geneva after it appeared in 1759. In this work, the French Enlightenment thinker addresses the problem of naive optimism. Leonard Bernstein used the work in 1956 as a basis for one of his best scores; however, a theatrical realisation of the com...
Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor
from Otto Nicolai (January 2012)
The figure of the dubious misfit Sir John Falstaff has become a modern myth - fat, lascivious, arrogant, yet also full of humour and passion. With his brilliant, bold tricks he causes confusion in the lives of some of the staider members of the establishment. Suddenly, the all-too-secure world of...
The Sound of Music
from Richard Rodgers (April 2012)
In the last season the story of the famous, singing Austrian Trapp family came to the stage in Vienna for the first time ever and was a great success. Based on the true-life tale in pre-war Austria of Maria, sent as a governess to the household of Baron Georg Ritter von Trapp to look after his se...
Salome
from Richard Strauss (October 2011)
The theatre censor forbade Gustav Mahler from including "Salome" in the Hofoper programme. The first Viennese production of the work therefore took place in 1910 at the Volksoper, where the opera now returns 101 years later. At that time "Salome", which was based on Oscar Wildes play, offended ...
, Gernot Kranner (Erronius), Drei Soldaten, Robert Meyer (Pseudolus), Florian Spiess (Miles Gloriosus), Herbert Steinböck (Senex), Dagmar Hellberg (Domina) ©right=© Barbara Palffy/Volksoper&kontakt=&urheber=&size=167.3)
Die spinnen, die Römer!
from Stephen Sondheim (December 2011)
The first Broadway show for which Stephen Sondheim wrote music and lyrics in 1962 was a sensational success: "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum". The main role was taken (as in the Hollywood film of 1966) by Zero Mostel. Sondheims most frequently performed work is now being produce...
, Daniel Schmutzhard (Papageno)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=136.1)
Die Zauberflöte
from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (September 2011)
Mozart's penultimate opera, and a fairy-tale work that remains popular with young and old alike. The prince Tamino, with the aid of a magic flute and the bird catcher Papageno as his guide, finds the Temple of Isis where Pamina, the woman he loves but has never met, resides. Pamina, daughter of t...
, Daniel Behle (Belmonte), Kristiane Kaiser (Konstanze)©right=Copyright: Dimo Dimov / Volksoper Wien&kontakt=&urheber=&size=127.4)
Die Entführung aus dem Serail
from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (May 2012)
The first successful German opera had to make use of concepts such as "Turkish fashion" and comply with Joseph II's instruction to compose a "national musical comedy". Yet Mozart's genius shaped from these requirements an outstanding opus which was the first of his many Viennese opera masterpiece...