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The Deutsche Oper Berlin 2017-2018 Season

The reputation of the Deutsche Oper Berlin is very well established. Music lovers from all over the world know that the austere façade of the imposing 1950s building houses one of the largest opera companies in Europe.

As usual, during this season 2017-2018, the Deutsche Oper displays about 40 opera titles as well as concerts and ballet performances of very high quality. Among the new productions, one particularly notices the creation of L’Invisible. At 81 years old, the great composer Aribert Reiman offers Berlin a new opus on a text of Maeterlinck

After Les Huguenots, the great French opera is again honored with The Prophet of the same Meyerbeer in a much-anticipated stage setting of the genius Olivier Py. Rolando Villazón returns, to our greatest satisfaction, for the staging of Fledermaus, a bat that the audience will welcome with great joy, as it should be. Das Wunder der Heliane should please lovers of rare performances, since Korngold’s work is less often staged than Die tote Stadt, his other masterpiece.

Also noteworthy are two remarkable concert versions that allow Diana Damrau to shine in Maria Stuarda de Donizetti and Joseph Calleja in L’Arlesiana de Cilea.

A great season is also judged by the reprises with the appropriate distributions. It is a real pleasure to hear the beautiful Pretty Yende in Lucia di Lammermoor facing René Barbera. Bryan Hymel and Diana Damrau form an exceptional duo in Gounod’s Faust and Klaus Florian Vogt is a Lohengrin that a true music lover must see at least once in his lifetime.

But this season 2017-2018 of the Deutsche Oper is without any doubt the year Anja Harteros. The superb soprano is distributed in no less than three operas where she offers the full extent of her immense talent (Lohengrin by Wagner and Verdi with A ballo in Maschera and Don Carlo).

Other beautiful sopranos we can enjoy in Berlin this season are Maria José Siri, Hui He, Maria Agresta or even Sonya Yoncheva in a concert where she will sing airs of Verdi. There is also an expected Traviata with Olga Peretyatko.

The repertory of the 2017-2018 season of the Berlin Opera is very well balanced between the works in Italian and German with, of course, operas in French (Carmen, Le Prophète, L’amour des trois oranges and Faust) and Russian (Lady Macbeth of Mtzenk). Verdi is undoubtedly the best served with the great popular successes like Aida, Nabucco, Rigoletto and Il Trovatore or the previously quoted La Traviata. Wagner doesn´t stay behind with Der fliegende Holländer, Lohengrin and Tannhaüser, but the perfect European synthesis is Mozart with Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro, Cosí fan tutte and Don Giovanni, all true masterpieces!

And let´s not forget about dance, as with the Staatsballet Berlin, the Deutsche Oper offers performances of exceptional quality. The classic Swan Lake, Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty go side by side with the works of the most contemporary choreographers in view, Benjamin Millepied or Jean-Christophe Maillot. A magnificent season that confirms Berlin´s place in the top of the great cities of classical music and the opera.