2021/22 program: colorful diversity

Eleven premieres, three revivals, and 18 works in the repertoire make up the Volksoper program for 2021/22.

• The starting whistle for the new season blows with the football operetta Roxy und ihr Wunderteam.
• With five opera premieres, the journey goes from Vienna via Moscow to Switzerland, Vienna, and Hollywood: Der Rosenkavalier takes audiences to Vienna at the time of Maria Theresa, while Benjamin Britten's Death in Venice casts audiences under the spell of the lagoon city of the same name. Zemlinsky's opera Kleider machen Leute turns life in the Swiss village of Goldach on its head. Then there are the monumental Russian "folk operas" Boris Godunow and Tod Machover's Schoenberg in Hollywood.
• In the Kurt Weill musical Lady in the Dark, psychoanalysis meets the glamorous fashion business.
• It's also showtime in La Cage aux Folles, the Broadway musical that deals with stage fright, love, and tolerance. With Viktor Gernot and Drew Sarich.
• Time to dance: the Vienna State Balletpresents works by, among others, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Merce Cunningham, Hans van Manen, and ballet director Martin Schläpfer.

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 operettas…!"