Vienna Volksoper

Artistic Director Lotte de Beer is building bridges between tradition and innovation, nostalgia and utopia at the Vienna Volksoper. De Beer’s vision:

"My goal is to be able to call the Volksoper a house of the artists, a house of the audience. An establishment where people can be seduced, where they are invited to reflect and where they can laugh with no inhibition."

The prerequisites are perfect, since variety and proximity to the audience are part of the theater's DNA. Nowhere else in Vienna can opera, operetta, musicals and dance be found together on a single stage. We look forward to new artists and works, but also to the popular and familiar.

© WienTourismus/Gregor Hofbauer

Highlights of the 2026/27 Season

The 2026/27 programme is once again packed with a wide range of offerings, including ten premieres. Here are the highlights:

• Astrid Lindgren’s Ronja Räubertochter, a timeless plea for courage and tolerance
• Richard Heuberger’s operetta Der Opernball, packed with intrigue
• Zur heißen Zitrone – stories from the world of allotment gardens
• Mozart and Da Ponte’s brilliant opera Così fan tutte
• Musical News: Two iconic Broadway musicals are premiering this season: Chicago and Hello, Dolly!. Also in the repertoire are My Fair Lady and Bernstein’s legendary West Side Story.
• The Vienna State Ballet will present two new ballet evenings Carmen Suite/Burden Loops and Masterpieces for Two. The revival of the ballet Max und Moritz will be a particular highlight.

For young audiences

More than a quarter of the Volksoper’s audience is under 30, and there’s also plenty happening in the programme of the Junge Volksoper. A few tips on which shows would be particularly suitable for the whole family (in addition to the Ronja Räubertochter and Max und Moritz mentioned above):

• Mozart’s Magic Flute

• My Fair Lady – musical by Frederick Loewe and Alan Jay Lerner 

• The War of the Buttons – music theater for the whole family

• Hansel and Gretel – Opera by Engelbert Humperdinck

• Especially suitable for teenagers aged 13 and over are Killing Carmen (based on Georges Bizet’s Carmen) and the comic opera The Pirates of Penzance.

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History of the house

The present-day Vienna Volksoper was opened in 1898 as the "Emperor's Anniversary City Theater" and initially run as a lyric theater only. Operas and musical comedies were subsequently added to the program in 1903. World-famous singers such as Maria Jeritza, Leo Slezak, and Richard Tauber performed here, and Alexander Zemlinsky worked here as conductor.

At selected operettas and musicals, subtitles in English bring the show's action a bit closer to non-German speaking visitors; after all, "The whole world loves operetta…!"