After the great success at the Salzburg Festival in summer 2019, the co-production with Komische Oper of Orpheus in the Underworld was finally able to take place in front of a 100% full house in Berlin. 2G+ (vaccinated or recovered, wearing a mask at all times) regulations makes it possible. For his first full-length opera, Jacques Offenbach based his inspiration on the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, but shifted it to the France of the 2nd Republic and used it as an opera buffa...

Aribert Reimann – now in his 80ies – is one of the most important and prominent contemporary German composers. Since composition of his opera Lear (first performed with grand success at Munich State Opera in 1978), he considered the creation of another stage work based on one of the huge mythological characters of world literature, Medea. But it's only when discovering the Austrian writer Grillparzer’s adaptation (first performed in 1821) that the subject...