the upcoming season at the Volksoper Wien is an anniversary season: exactly 125 years ago, in 1898, our house was opened under the name Kaiserjubiläum-Stadttheater.
We are taking this anniversary season as an opportunity to look back and thus also ahead. With a sextant one determines one's position in relation to the celestial bodies and establishes where one is, where one comes from, where one is heading. This is also how we understand theatre: we look at where we have come from, where we are and where we could be going from different angles. This anniversary season could also be called: a sextant in time.
Preview of the 2023/24 season
Many of our premieres are linked to our history; with all our productions we look for the present and future of music theatre. This looking back and forward will hopefully lead to many happy, beautiful, original, delicious, fascinating, imaginative ... performances.
Nine new productions and three premieres in the "Encore" series are on the programme, many of which have a special history with our house: Richard Strauss' Salome, first performed in Vienna at the Volksoper in 1910, returns in Luc Bondy's legendary production. Lotte de Beer directs West Side Story, which had its German-language premiere at the Volksoper in 1968. Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow), one of our most frequently performed operettas with over 1000 performances, is revisited by Mariame Clément and Omer Meir Wellber, and Puccini's La rondine returns 104 years after its first performance.
With the world premiere of Lass uns die Welt vergessen - Volksoper 1938 we commemorate those members of the house who were driven out of the Volksoper, persecuted and murdered by the Nazis. John Adams' gripping Passion oratorio The Gospel According to the Other Mary - a spiritual work in our unspiritual times - receives its Austrian premiere, directed by Lisenka Heijboer Castañón, and the youngest ensemble members of the house take a fantastic trip with Jacques Offenbach and director Laurent Pelly in Die Reise zum Mond (The Journey to the Moon). The moon also plays a role in the Vienna State ballet's three-part premiere The moon wears a white shirt by Martin Schläpfer, Karole Armitage and Paul Taylor, while elfin creatures take centre stage in the first part of Les Sylphides.
Ein bisschen trallalala is a tribute by Ruth Brauer-Kvam and Robert Palfrader to the legendary operetta diva Fritzi Massary and actor Max Pallenberg, Aristocats is aimed at our youngest audience as a follow-up production to The Jungle Book (which remains in the programme), and the Netflix generation can look forward to the premiere of Jonathan Larson's musical tick, tick... BOOM!
The concert series of the Volksoper Wien Orchestra, programmed by music director Omer Meir Wellber, will be extended, starting with the Verdi Requiem at the Vienna Konzerthaus. The Opera Studio, supported by Christian Zeller, is entering its second round: the members are already performing in numerous productions on the Volksoper stage and also presenting projects at the Südbahnhotel Semmering and the Kunsthistorisches Museum. And the fruitful partnerships with the Wiener Festwochen and Vienna Pride will also continue.
You can obtain the printed season preview for € 3.50 at the Bundestheater box offices in the opera foyer, at the box office of the Volksoper Wien or by ordering by e-mail to: marketing@volksoper.at (shipping plus postage).
