This new production of Giuseppe Verdi’s »Don Carlo« conducted by Christian Thielemann and staged by Vera Nemirova was scheduled for spring 2020 as a co-production with the Salzburg Easter Festival. Set designer Heike Scheele created a monumental library space for this opera about power and the suppression of free-thinking. A special feature of this production: composer Manfred Trojahn wrote a new instrumental prologue to set up the background to the drama and transport us into Verdi’s sound world. After both the Salzburg and Dresden premieres with Anna Netrebko in the role of Elisabeth of Valois were cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, it was again Anna Netrebko and Yusif Eyvazov who inaugurated the reopening of the Semperoper after the spring lockdown of 2020 with a concert performance of arias and duets from »Don Carlo« accompanied by a chamber ensemble.

Over the years the Semperoper has hosted many world premieres. The opera house’s most recent commission is »Die andere Frau« (»The Other Wife«) by composer Torsten Rasch, who created an opera around the biblical story of Abraham and Sarah. An exciting tale of three individuals and their entangled relationship, this work also deals with the emergence of the three great monotheistic religions. Born in Dresden in 1964, Torsten Rasch is a hugely versatile composer, having written operas and orchestral pieces as well as film scores. The young director Immo Karaman, who makes his Dresden debut in this staging of »Die andere Frau«, places the audience in the middle of the action, namely on the stage of the Semperoper. Alongside the main protagonists, the production also features the Iranian singer Sussan Deyhim. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the production was postponed to the 2021/22 season.

Co-produced with the Tokyo Nikikai Opera Foundation and Det Kongelige Teater Copenhagen, this staging of Giacomo Puccini’s »Madama Butterfly« was supposed to open at the Semperoper on 26 April 2020 following its successful premiere in Japan, but had to be postponed to the 2021/22 season due to the coronavirus pandemic. The task of interpreting this beloved classic of the opera repertoire fell to the Japanese director Amon Miyamoto, who is equally at home in the traditional Japanese theatrical forms of Nō and Kabuki as in occidental plays, musical and opera. This production of »Madama Butterfly« will give Dresden audiences a first taste of his work. Together with set designer Boris Kudlička and fashion icon Kenzō Takada, who died in 2020, Amon Miyamoto developed his unique take on the Japanese-American story of doomed love, a tale which also displays some antiquated Western notions of 19th century Japan.

The Dresden premiere of Mischa Spoliansky’s cabaret revue »Wie werde ich reich und glücklich?« (»How can I become rich and happy?«), directed by Manfred Weiß, was supposed to be performed in Semper Zwei on 5 April 2020, but had to be postponed to the 2021/22 season due to the coronavirus pandemic. Originally produced in 1930 at Berlin’s Komödie am Kurfürstendamm, this sardonic, jazzy work by Mischa Spoliansky and his librettist Felix Joachimson explores people’s sorrows and hardships but also their courage to get on with life at a time of crisis. And it investigates the still relevant topics of self-improvement and contentment. Following the performances of »Alles Schwindel«, this production is a further stepping-stone in the rehabilitation of Mischa Spoliansky’s reputation, who from 1903 received part of his musical training in Dresden under Mark Günzburg, and in 1933 was forced to emigrate to England to escape Nazi persecution.