Munich Opera Festival 2025 - Bayerische Staatsoper

Munich opera festival 2025

27.6.–31.7.2025

The tradition of the Munich Opera Festival hails back to 1875 when a “Festive Summer” was organised for the first time, a tradition which will also continue under General Manager Serge Dorny. All of the season’s new productions will then be united with the 2025 Munich Opera Festival. The two opera premieres of the Munich Opera Festival, Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Pénélope by Gabriel Fauré, present a reinterpreted classic of the repertoire and a French opera not yet performed at the Bayerische Staatsoper. One of the focus points of the 2025 Munich Opera Festival is on myths and how they change over the centuries. Along with Dido and Aeneas … Erwartung and Pénélope, two pieces that are directly connected with the Trojan War as the greatest battle in the ancient tradition, the programme also features Die Liebe der Danae by Richard Strauss, where the characters are all borrowed from the Greek gods and legendary figures. In Antonín Dvořák’s Rusalka, the eponymous mythological creature is brought to us in the eastern Slavic tradition, while in Richard Wagner’s Lohengrinand Das RheingoldGerman and Nordic myths play out on the stage. Don Giovanni can also be enjoyed as an audio-visual live broadcast on Max-Joseph-Platz with Opera for All during the 2025 Munich Opera Festival. Numerous chamber concerts, lieder recitals and baroque concerts complement the programme. With contemporary ballets from our younger generation of choreographers, the SPHÄREN.03 | León & Lightfootballet evening also celebrates a premiere during the Munich Opera Festival. The Bayerisches Staatsballett will also revive the new production of the season, La Sylphideby Pierre Lacotte, as well as Romeo and Juliet and Onegin.

STORIES SET TO MUSIC AND DANCED TO MUSIC ABOUT THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF BEING HUMAN: MYTH AND MUSIC THEATER

Since the beginning of human history, we have been telling ourselves myths about gods, the creation of the world or the creation of man - stories about great themes that need to be interpreted: Friedrich Nietzsche makes fruitful use of the myth's circular concept of time for his concept of the “eternal return of the same”, while for Sigmund Freud myths serve primarily as a projection surface for human needs and problems.

The interaction between myth and music theater can be traced back to the birth of the genre: In addition to Claudio Monteverdi, numerous composers set the Orpheus myth to music about the crossing of boundaries between this world and the hereafter through the power of music and love. Ancient figures are also at the heart of Richard Strauss' opera The Love of Danae, which the composer described as “cheerful mythology”, and Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas - here, Homer's Iliad, one of the oldest written accounts of the Trojan War, the greatest battle in Greek and Roman mythology, was the inspiration. Richard Wagner, on the other hand, draws on Germanic and Norse mythology for his 14-hour tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, claiming a universal interpretation of the world, while his Lohengrin is based on the medieval (Christian) Grail myth.

A myth is often accompanied by supernatural phenomena, and so the title heroines in the ballet La Sylphide as air spirits and in Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka as water creatures fit into the mythical universe just as much as their fearsome counterparts, the witches Madge and Ježibaba.

In a supporting program of lectures and readings during the Munich Opera Festival at the Nationaltheater, we want to dedicate ourselves to those works in our repertoire that perpetuate mythical tales.

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ADVANCE BOOKING MUNICH OPERA FESTIVAL

Binding written orders for the Munich Opera Festival (via online form on the website of the Bavarian State Opera) are now possible. Processing will begin on Sat, 01.02.25. All festival orders are expected to be processed by mid-March 2025. Online, telephone and box office sales of all remaining tickets will begin on Fri, 28.03.25. The date of the traditional first sale and the issue of waiting numbers will be announced in the Festival brochure.