Die Englische Katze

Premiere on 05. November 2025

Composer Hans Werner Henze. Libretto by Edward Bond based on the tale, Peines de cœur d’une chatte anglaise, by Honoré de Balzac.

recommended for age 14 and older

A story for singers and instrumentalists in two acts (1983)

In German. New Production.

Medienpartner

As the template for his opera, Die Englische Katze (1983), Hans Werner Henze turned to a story by Honoré de Balzac from the early 1840s, illustrated by the famous caricaturist, Grandville. The libretto for Die Englische Katze was delivered by the English author Edward Bond, with whom Henze had already collaborated successfully with his previous opera, We Come to the River. If this was a passionate plea against the war, at first glance this animal parable, Die Englische Katze, appears to be apolitical, indeed, even harmless or amusing. The story about the ageing tomcat, Lord Puff, president of a vegetarian-nourishing “Royal Society for the Protection of Rats” and his young wife Minette, who falls in love with another, daring and exciting tomcat, Tom, ends tragically however, and serves as a wicked satire. Minette is drowned by the other cats, Tom is stabbed in the back, just after he has inherited a large sum of money. The insensitive, hypocritical cat society that only looks out for its own benefit gets off scot free.

Henze wrote neoclassical music seemingly inspired by the 18th century, which skilfully alienated the many traditional forms, such as cavatina, aria, duet, waltz, tango, ländler, and with music that is often arranged with chamber music transparency. With all playful lightness required, however, it is constantly clear that the piece holds a mirror up to the viewer and that we ourselves are the sanctimonious cat society.

Director Christiane Lutz returns to the Bayerische Staatsoper following The Consul and Mignon. She studied musical theatre direction at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna, was a finalist with the Ringaward 2014, fellow of the Bayreuth Festival and Salzburg Festival, and following festival engagements at the Theater Lübeck and Oper Graz she coordinated the Vienna State Opera’s Children’s Opera Tent. In 2018/2019 she held a lectureship for scenic design at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. Her previous productions include, among others, Rigoletto at the Glyndebourne Opera Festival, Philippe Boesmans’s La Ronde at the Opéra national de Paris, Wozzeck at the Staatstheater Cottbus, Alcina at the Oper Graz, Hänsel and Gretel and Rinaldo at the Theater an der Wien, Der Kaiser von Atlantis at the Semperoper Dresden and Ulysses during the Wiesbaden Bach Festival. She was also the project development manager for the Vienna State Opera’s new youth venue, “Nest”.

Christiane Lutz traces the Mafia-like structures exposed as hypocritical by Henze in the cat high society. The illusory support for the rats, the cats’ original enemy, is merely a pretext for personal enrichment. Anyone who, like the country bumpkin Minette, demonstrates moral scruples, has forfeited their place in this society of bigotry and corruption. Possible parallels with today’s human society are, needless to say, purely coincidental!