General Manager Nikolaus Bachler and General Music Director Kirill Petrenko headline the new season at the Bayerische Staatsoper with – KILL YOUR DARLINGS: “This request depicts the dilemma posed by emotional decisions and rational behaviour – an idea that plays a major role in both the art world and in the formation of our annual plan,” says Nikolaus Bachler. Kirill Petrenko conducts the first premiere and opens the season with Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Die tote Stadt; singers include Marlis Petersen and Jonas Kaufmann. The General Music Director will also conduct Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff with Wolfgang Koch in the title role. Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen, composed from 2014 to 2018, will be developed by Cornelius Meister and Andreas Kriegenburg. Oksana Lyniv conducts with Judith a double evening of two pieces by Béla Bartók: in a production by Katie Mitchell Bluebeard's Castle and the Concerto for Orchestra are performed. Johannes Erath returns to Munich with a reinterpretation of Giuseppe Verdi’s rarely performed I masnadieri, based on Friedrich Schiller's The Robbers ; Diana Damrau can be enjoyed as Amalia. An opera project by Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović celebrates its world premiere with 7 Deaths of Maria Callas, before Ivor Bolton and Hans Neuenfels open the 2020 Munich Opera Festival with Jean-Philippe Rameau’s Castor et Pollux. Also the Opera Studio will develop a new production this season: Mignon by Ambroise Thomas.