Artistic director Lotte de Beer is working with musical director Omer Meir Wellber at the Vienna Volksoper to build bridges between known and unknown, tradition and renewal, nostalgia and utopia. De Beer's vision:

"My goal is to be able to call the Volksoper a house of the artists, a house of the audience. A house in which artists tell stories through song, dance, and play; a house in which people can be seduced, are invited to think, and in which they can laugh without restraint."

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.

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2022/23 season

Eight premieres are on the program in 2022/23:

1. Orpheus in der Unterwelt (directed by: Spymonkey), the first full-length operetta in music history
2. Die letzte Verschwörung, an operetta premiere about conspiracy theories from the pen of Moritz Eggert
3. Die Dubarry, a Viennese-Berlinese operetta with Annette Dasch and Harald Schmidt
4. Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor, a German play opera in the humoristic-feministic view of Nina Spijkers
5.  Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio), Mozart's singspiel 
6. Die Dreigroschenoper by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht with Sona MacDonald as Macheath
7. Jolanthe und der Nussknacker - Tchaikovsky's opera and his ballet are interwoven into a poetic family performance.
8. Promethean Fire is danced by the Vienna State Ballet.

© Björn Klein

Four jewels from the repertoire of the Volksoper return to the program: Carsten Süss undertakes a recasting of Fledermaus and Sigrid Hauser plays Mrs. Frosch. After an extended period, Harry Kupfer's La bohème production, Achim Freyer's La Cenerentola, and Matthias Davidvs Anatevka can be seen again. The repertoire includes 17 operetta, opera, musical, and ballet productions.

Exciting cooperations

And there are exciting partnerships: With the Vienna Festival, Austria's first performance of a pop evening by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is planned for 2023, on the evening of Vienna Pride the Volksoper shows Nicht die Väter, a deadly serious stand-up comedy about the role of the father. There will also be a choir sing-along (1000 voices).

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…!"