The new season 2017/2018 at the Wiener Staatsoper

Premières

No fewer than six opera premières will be staged at the opera house on the Ring during the course of the 2017/2018 season, and there will also be a première of a children’s opera at the AGRANA STUDIO STAGE | WALFISCHGASSE: 

• Sergei Prokofiev’s The Gambler (4 October 2017 – conductor: Simone Young; directed by: Karoline Gruber; with: Dan Paul Dumitrescu, Elena Guseva, Misha Didyk, Linda Watson, Thomas Ebenstein, Elena Maximova, Morten Frank Larsen); 
• Alban Berg’s Lulu in the three-act version (3 December 2017 – conductor: Ingo Metzmacher; directed by: Willy Decker; with: Agneta Eichenholz, Angela Denoke, Bo Skovhus, Herbert Lippert, Franz Grundheber); 
• George Frideric Handel’s Ariodante (24 February 2018 – conductor: William Christie; directed by: David McVicar; with: Sarah Connolly, Chen Reiss, Hila Fahima, Christophe Dumaux, Rainer Trost, Pavel Kolgatin, Wilhelm Schwinghammer); Gottfried von Einem’s Dantons Tod (24 March 2018 – conductor: Susanna Mälkki; directed by: Josef Ernst Köpplinger; with: Wolfgang Koch, Herbert Lippert, Jörg Schneider, Thomas Ebenstein, Olga Bezsmertna); 
• Camille Saint-Saën’s Samson et Dalila (12 May 2018 – conductor: Marco Armiliato; directed by: Alexandra Liedtke; with: Elīna Garanča, Roberto Alagna, Carlos Álvarez, Sorin Coliban); 
• Carl Maria von Weber’s Der Freischütz (11 June 2018 – conductor: Tomáš Netopil, directed by: Christian Räth; with Adrian Eröd, Camilla Nylund, Alan Held, Andreas Schager, Daniela Fally, Albert Dohmen); 
• Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella (28 January 2018 at the AGRANA STUDIO STAGE| WALFISCHGASSE; conductor: N. N.; directed by: Birgit Kajtna). 

Ballet Director Manuel Legris will be presenting three premières at the Wiener Staatsoper: 

• the three-part performance MacMillan | McGregor | Ashton (31 October 2017 – conductor: Valery Ovsyanikov) with Concerto by Kenneth MacMillan, Eden | Eden by Wayne McGregor und Marguerite and Armand by Frederick Ashton; 
• Edward Clugs Peer Gynt (21 January 2018 – conductor: Simon Hewett) 
• 2018 Nureyev Gala (29. Juni 2018 – conducted by Kevin Rhodes). 

Artists

The new season will also see the débuts of many artists, such as the conductors Susanna Mälkki, Giampaolo Bisanti, William Christie (with the orchestra of Les Arts Florissants), Tomáš Hanus, Alexander Soddy, Ramón Tebar and directors Josef Ernst Köpplinger and Alexandra Liedtke. Singers performing for the Wiener Staatsoper audience for the first time in 2017/2018 will include Hrachuhí Bassenz, Sarah Connolly, Annette Dasch, Lise Davidsen, Sabine Devieilhe, Agneta Eichenholz, Venera Gimadieva, Nora Gubisch, Elena Guseva, Christiane Karg, Anita Rachvelishvili, Simone Schneider; Benjamin Bernheim, Christophe Dumaux, Robert Gleadow, Murat Karahan, Bernard Richter, Andreas Schager, Wilhelm Schwinghammer, Thomas Tatzl. 

Important singers will make their personal role debuts at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2017/18: KS Elina Garanca and KS Roberto Alagna will make their worldwide debuts in the title roles of Samson et Dalila, Piotr Beczala will perform both his first Maurizio in Adriana Lecouvreur – alongside Anna Netrebko – and Don José in Carmen, Wolfgang Koch will take on the title role of Dantons Tod, Marina Rebeka will debut as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra, KS Angela Denoke as Countess Geschwitz in Lulu, Aleksandra Kurzak as Desdemona in Otello, to name just a few. 

The orchestra will play under the baton of many maestros who will be returning to the Wiener Staatsoper in the course of the coming season: Alain Altinoglu, Marco Armiliato, Pavel Baleff, Michael Boder, Semyon Bychkov, Frédéric Chaslin, James Conlon, Jonathan Darlington, KS Plácido Domingo, Dan Ettinger, Adam Fischer, James Gaffigan, Guillermo García Calvo, Sascha Goetzel, Eivind Gullberg Jensen, Michael Güttler, Daniel Harding, Graeme Jenkins, Patrick Lange, Louis Langrée, Jesús López Cobos, Cornelius Meister, Ingo Metzmacher, Tomáš Netopil, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Evelino Pidò, Speranza Scappucci, Peter Schneider, Jean-Christophe Spinosi, Jeffrey Tate, Sebastian Weigle, Simone Young. 

Wiener Staatsoper at AGRANA STUDIOBÜHNE | Walfischgasse

In the 2017/2018 season, the AGRANA STUDIO STAGE | WALFISCHGASSE will host the premiere of Cinderella, Juan Crisóstomo de Arriaga’s The Arabian Princess and Wagners Nibelungenring for Children (an adaptation by Hirofumi Misawa). Additionally, a variety of special programmes will take place there: artists in conversation with, among others, Wiener Staatsoper Director Dominique Meyer, introductory musical events, master classes, concerts and readings, lectures on opera history and other topics as well as events with the Opera School and the Ballet Academy. 

Concerts and Matinées

The wide-ranging programme of operas and ballets will be rounded off by several well-established event series: 

• Recitals: internationally acclaimed singers will perform attractive concert programmes on five evenings. 
• Matinee series Ensemble Matinee in the Mahler-Saal: on seven different dates, young ensemble singers will be showcasing their talent outside the regular performance schedule. They will be accompanied on the piano by the répétiteurs of the opera house. 
• Chamber Music Cycle of the Vienna Philharmonic: in ten matinées, members of the Vienna Philharmonic will present a diverse programme of chamber music in various different ensembles. 
• Kontrapunkte – discussion matinées by and with Clemens Hellsberg: Dr. Clemens Hellsberg will be moderating two high profile round table discussions about current cultural topics. 

In addition, a gala concert with KS Edita Gruberova – an artist who has been closely linked to the Vienna State Opera for almost five decades – will take place on June 23rd 2018. 

This wide spectrum of activities will be rounded off by a number of additional matinées. The ever-popular open day at the Wiener Staatsoper will take place on 3 September 2017. 

62nd Vienna Opera Ball, Magic Flute for children

On 8 February 2018, the 62nd Opera Ball will take place: the opera house will again be transformed into a gigantic ballroom, where two performances of The Magic Flute for children will be given the following day.

Wiener Staatsoper on tour

In the next season, the Wiener Staatsoper will go on tour with two concert performances: Don Giovanni in Abu Dhabi on 22 January 2018, Le nozze di Figaro in Aix-en-Provence on 2 April 2018. 

Wiener Staatsoper live at home

During the 2017/2018 season the WIENER STAATSOPER live at home programme will broadcast a total of 45 performances live on the internet in excellent picture and sound quality. Please find the full programme on www.staatsoperlive.com.

The Wiener Staatsoper has developed this new technology for a live schools programme on selected dates in order to make its portfolio available to large numbers of young people throughout Austria and abroad: Wiener Staatsoper live at school. This will enable students to discover the opera house and its many professions, experience live rehearsals, and watch live broadcasts of opera or ballet performances together in the morning during school hours thanks to time-shifted broadcasts. 

Live Opera on the Square

“Live Opera on the Square” will again feature a selection of around 20 opera and ballet performances per month that will be transmitted live on Herbert von Karajan Square outside the opera house in September, April, May and June. In addition, all performances from 27 December 2017 to 1 January 2018 as well as the New Year’s Concert of the Wiener Philharmoniker will also be screened live on the square. Die Fledermaus on 31 December will be a contribution to the City of Vienna’s “New Year’s Eve Trail”.