THE 2022/23 SEASON AT THE VIENNA STATE OPERA

We are pleased to be able to provide you with information on the next season. You will find it in full on our website as well as in the season preview, which is available this year free of charge during your visit to the Vienna State Opera and at our box offices. Furthermore, the preview will also be enclosed with the magazine BÜHNE (May issue).

Advance sales for the 2022/23 season start as follows:

• From 2 May: Sale of cycles and new subscriptions, start of advance sales (September/October) as well as advance orders for the entire season from November EXCLUSIVE for the Official Circle of Friends.
• From 16 May: Start of general advance sales for September/October, start of general advance orders for the entire season from November onwards

You can find all the information here. 

While the first season of the current Staatsoper management focused on the scenic and musical renewal of the core repertoire and the current season on premieres of revolutionary works that marked milestones in music history, 2022/23 is dedicated to Gustav Mahler: Mahler's inauguration as director of the opera house will be celebrated for the 125th time in autumn 2022 - all new productions of the coming season have their very own connection to Mahler; some in a very direct way, others via interesting detours.

The opening of the series of premieres will be a particularly interesting project, a scenic realisation of Mahler's Klagendes Lied and his Kindertotenlieder: Von der Liebe Tod. Calixto Bieto directs, Florian Boesch makes his house debut at the Vienna State Opera as well as conductor Lorenzo Viotti. Five more opera premieres follow: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, with a remarkable cast including Michael Volle, David Butt Philip, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, Wolfgang Koch and Georg Zeppenfeld. Music director Philippe Jordan is on the podium, directed by Keith Warner. Also musically directed by Philippe Jordan is the new production of Salome in a staging by Cyril Teste, who - like Keith Warner - is working at the Vienna State Opera for the first time. Malin Byström sings the title role. The Mozart-Da Ponte cycle continues with Le nozze di Figaro. Philippe Jordan and Barrie Kosky are working again on this production together with a young Mozart ensemble. A reunion with the Concentus Musicus under Pablo Heras-Casado as well as with Georg Nigl, Kate Lindsey and Josh Lovell takes place with Monteverdis Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria which will be directed by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito. The new productions will conclude with a rarely performed, very important work of the 20th century by Francis Poulenc: Dialogues des Carmélites. Bertrand de Billy conducts, directing- for the first time at the Vienna State Opera - is Austrian director Magdalena Fuchsberger.

Away from our new productions, we would like to draw your attention to further musical highlights:
 
Elīna Garanča makes her eagerly awaited international role debut as Amneris in the Aida revival. She can also be heard alongside Piotr Beczala in Carmen, one of her signature roles. Beczala will sing Don José, Cavaradossi in Tosca and Lohengrin. Jonas Kaufmann, recently appointed Kammersänger, returns to the Vienna State Opera for two revivals: in the title role of Andrea Chénier and as Radames in the Aida showcase with Elīna Garanča.

Asmik Grigorian sings the title role in the Jenůfa revival for the first time at the Haus am Ring and Santuzza and Nedda respectively in Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci. Nina Stemme returns to the Vienna State Opera as Elektra, Isolde and Ortrud in Lohengrin, Krassimira Stoyanova as Tosca (which she embodies here for the first time) and as the Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier, Camilla Nylund as Ariadne, Tosca and Elsa in Lohengrin. There will be a reunion with Roberto Alagna, who will sing Eléazar in the revival of La Juive, with Benjamin Bernheim (as the Duke in Rigoletto and Rodolfo in La bohème), Juan Diego Flórez (as Tonio in La Fille du régiment and for the first time as Singer in Der Rosenkavalier), and with Sonya Yoncheva, who will make two personal role debuts with Cio-Cio-San (Madama Butterfly) and Rachel (La Juive). You can also look forward to performances by Malin Byström, Günther Groissböck, Anja Kampe, Tomasz Konieczny, Erwin Schrott, Ludovic Tézier and Bryn Terfel, to name but a few.

The 2022/23 season of the Vienna State Ballet brings a »Who's Who« of the art of dance to the stages of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Volksoper: from great story ballets to American neo-classical and contemporary dance, audiences can expect a fascinating cosmos of the most diverse forms, aesthetics, working methods and casts. With two premieres and two revivals at the Vienna State Opera, three premieres at the Volksoper Wien and seven repertoire programmes, the Vienna State Ballet invites us to dream and fantasise, revel and marvel, laugh and cry, but as the most agile seismograph among the performing arts it also senses the current questions of our time, our fears and hopes.
At the Vienna State Opera, the ballet season opens with Martin Schläpfer's world premiere of the ballet classic Sleeping Beauty. In a stage design by Florian Etti and costumes by Catherine Voeffray, the ballet director and chief choreographer now takes on a second of Tchaikovsky's three great ballets after his successful choreographic realisation of Swan Lake in 2018. The musical director is Patrick Lange, with whom the Vienna State Ballet is continuing its successful collaboration after In Seventh Heaven.
The second premiere at the Vienna State Opera features two first performances with the Vienna State Ballet: Heinz Spoerli's signature work Goldberg Variations meets Ohad Naharin's Tabula Rasa. Arvo Pärt's composition of the same name will be conducted by Christoph Koncz, since 2008 principal violinist of the Vienna Philharmonic, on the podium of the Vienna State Opera Orchestra. The distinguished pianist William Youn has been engaged for Bach's Goldberg Variations.
The Volksoper Wien is also intensively engaged with Tchaikovsky. In Jolanta and the Nutcracker, dance and opera are closely interwoven. The new director Lotte de Beer is working with choreographer Andrey Kaydanovskiy on a dance opera for the whole family. The new music director Omer Meir Wellber is in charge of the musical direction.
Promethean Fire will celebrate its premiere at the Volksoper after its cancellation in the 2020/21 season due to Corona. Two works by the American greats of modern dance Paul Taylor and Mark Morris will be shown in Vienna for the first time and meet two miniature pieces by Martin Schläpfer to compositions by György Ligeti. Canadian conductor Jean-Michaël Lavoie will make his house debut at the Volksoper Wien.
In 2022/23, the Choreography Platform will again give dancers of the Vienna State Ballet the opportunity to create their own choreographic works in a professional setting and to present them to the audience on the stage of the Volksoper.
The repertoire of the Vienna State Ballet includes two ballet comedies, the revivals of Frederick Ashton's La Fille mal gardée and Rudolf Nureyev's Don Quixote. Supplemented by John Cranko's Onegin, three productions will return alongside the story ballets, focusing on dance art of the 20th and 21st centuries. Liebeslieder, Im siebten Himmel and Die Jahreszeiten present choreographers whose signatures are integral parts of the Vienna State Ballet, but who also forge new relationships with the ensemble.
The repertoire at the Volksoper Wien invites encounters with contemporary artists. Alexei Ratmansky, Andrey Kaydanovskiy and Martin Schläpfer as well as Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Merce Cunningham and Hans van Manen meet in two Triple Bills. Martin Schläpfer's Ein Deutsches Requiem with a top-class cast of singers completes the diverse repertoire.