#BSOnacht

Die Nacht vor Weihnachten

Premiere on 29. November 2025

Composer Nikolai Rimski-Korsakow. Libretto by the composer, based on the eponymous narrative by Nikolai W. Gogol.

recommended for age 10 and older

A true Christmas song. Opera in four acts (1895)

In Russian. With surtitles in German and English. New Production.

A co-production with the Komische Oper Berlin.

>>> Introductory matinee

Medienpartner

When the nights are at their longest, frosty wind and snow storms sweep the land, it is the time of the Koliada – of the pagan winter solstice feast and the Christian-orthodox Christmas celebration in equal measure. In these magical “twelve days of Christmas” the barrier between the human world and the realm of dark beings becomes especially thin. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “true” Christmas song, Die Nacht vor Weihnachten, based on the eponymous story by Nikolai Gogol, also plays out in this very same period.

The composer skilfully combines elements of Slavic fairytales and folklore, satirical village comedies and surreal dream worlds with one another, and thus contrasts the Christian Christmas traditions with pagan figures and rituals. In doing so he ties in Christmas with the cycle of the solar year and creates a world in which the Ukrainian Koliada singing (similar to the Christian tradition of carol singing), church bells, devils, witches, nature deities and the battle between bright and dark spirits during the winter solstice, the “birth of the sun”, exist alongside one another.

Humans and supernatural beings clash directly here – a witch, who intends to dissuade her son from a love affair; that son, who as proof of his love for his beloved, intends to procure the Tsarina's golden slippers; a devil, who is angered that the humans no longer fear him; a young woman, trapped in inter-human group dynamics; a kidnapped moon and dancing stars, all embedded in a lively and imaginative world of sound.

The Nacht vor Weihnachten production, following on from, among others, Die Fledermaus, Der Rosenkavalier and The Cunning Little Vixen, will be Barrie Kosky’s seventh collaboration at the Bayerische Staatsoper. His works are known for their sensitive balance between spectacular excess and intimacy, glamour and ugliness, humour and pathos, where time and again they challenge the limits of seemingly inflexible opera “standards”. In his view there are no purely “good” or “bad” characters in Slavic folklore – and therefore nor are there in this opera either. With his characteristic predilection for the grotesque, the eccentric and the acrobatic, together with stage designer Klaus Grünberg and costume designer Klaus Bruns, Kosky approaches this piece as a “Christmas fairytale” far from the dark German fairytale tradition. Instead this story reminds us of the feast’s pagan roots, which abound with magic and the supernatural. GMD Vladimir Jurowski conducts.