Recommendations & Highlights
The Semperoper Dresden offers numerous programme highlights perfectly suited to you needs as tour operator, hotel manager or private group. We will let you know about seasonal and special highlights, prices and remaining tickets. Moreover, we offer you recommendations for your stay in Dresden and Elbe Region. Look forward to and secure your place at our artistically thrilling and moving performances!gen!
Contact for further information or tickets bookings
Phone +49 (0)351 49 11 718
E-Mail gruppen@semperoper.de
Current recommendations for the 2025/26 season
Oper highlights over Whitsun
Georges Bizet
Carmen
Carmen’s air of seduction is both her weapon and her downfall, for in the end she dies at the hands of her jealous lover, Don José.
Contingent for your and your guests:
23 & 25 May 2026
Giuseppe Verdi
Rigoletto
At the beginning of the opera, the Jester of Mantua mocks a grieving father, only to end up weeping for his own dead daughter.
Contingents for you and your guests:
22 May 2026
Experience early summer in Dresden
Nino Rota
The Florentine Hat
“How am I supposed to do that? I'm going mad!” On Fadinard’s wedding day, his horse eats the straw hat of a lady having a bit of fun with her lover in the bushes. But Anaide doesn’t dare return to her jealous husband Beaupertuis without her new Florentine hat: she simply has to get hold of a new one! An odyssey full of hijinks begins, taking Fadinard across the length and breadth of Paris ...
Contingents for you and your guests:
19 & 29 June 2026
Giuseppe Verdi
Aida
Christmas Eve, 1871. In Cairo’s newly built opera house, the curtain rises on the premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida.
Contingents for you and your guests:
26 June 2026
Charles Gounod
Roméo et Juliette
The world’s greatest love story wrapped in enchanting melodies and moving choruses.
Contingents for you and your guests:
1, 5, 8 & 11 July 2026
Highlights Season 2026/27
Christmas and New Year at the Semperoper Dresden
Sergej Prokofjew
The Love for Three Oranges
How terrible must life be if you can’t laugh? Sergei Prokofiev’s opera The Love for Three Oranges is about a king who wishes to help his sick son.
A satirical, grotesque and fast-paced adventure about the search for laughter awaits you.
Contingents for you and your guests:
4, 16 & 22 December 2026
Giacomo Puccini
La bohème
A shared flat in Paris’s bohemian world of artists and students: The lives of the poet Rodolfo and his friends are filled with talk of freedom, independence, art, as well as financial hardship.
Contingents for you and your guests:
5, 7, 11, 19 & 26 December 2026
Franz Lehár
The Merry Widow
An entertaining battle of the sexes full of charm, wit and joie de vivre. To this day, The Merry Widow remains one of the most popular and most frequently performed operettas.
Premiere: 29.November 2026
Contingents for your and your guests:
2, 27 December 2026 & 1, 8 January 2027
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
New Years Eve Concert
Join us for the traditional New Year’s Eve concert of the Staatskapelle Dresden, featuring the exceptional French conductor Marie Jacquot alongside mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo and pianist Igor Levit, and get in the mood for the Beethoven anniversary year with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5.
Contingents for you and your guests:
30 & 31 December 2026
Winter highlights
Stephanie Lake, Akram Khan
Wings and Feathers (Ballet)
Two works by Stephanie Lake and Akram Khan deal with aspects of individual freedom in movement. Stephanie Lake, one of the most prominent voices in Australian contemporary dance, has been Artist in Residence at the Semperoper Ballett since the 2025/26 season. Akram Khan, who combines elements of Western contemporary dance and Indian classical dance to create his own distinctive style, has been at the forefront of the international dance scene from London for over two decades.
Contingents for you and your guests:
22, 27, 30 January & 7 February 2027
Pietro Mascagni & Ruggero Leoncavallo
Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci
A passionate double bill of two crime operas, stages as a cryptiv play on several levels.
Contingents for you and your guests:
23, 26 & 29 January 2027
Johan Inger
Carmen (Ballet)
In his contemporary dance piece, Johan Inger focuses on the psychological decline of Don José, who destroys his own soul alongside his beloved Carmen.
Contingents for you and your guests:
19, 21 & 26 February 2027
Beethoven 200&
Although Ludwig van Beethoven only visited Dresden once, during a concert tour in 1796, his works have always played a significant role at the Semperoper and in the concerts of the Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden. Much of Ludwig van Beethoven’s work is unique; much of it marks a period both before and after him. To experience all his symphonies in the 200th year since his death, in the context of new works inspired by Beethoven’s oeuvre, opens our ears to the future. Alongside his 9th Symphony, which Richard Wagner, as an ardent admirer of Beethoven, established in the Palm Sunday concert of 1846, his opera Fidelio stands alone in Beethoven’s oeuvre: encountering it in the context of Ferdinando Paër’s Leonora, which premiered in Dresden, promises to broaden one’s musical horizons into the past.
Ludwig van Beethoven
Fidelio
Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his opera about a woman who, disguised as a man, tries to rescue her husband from illegal incarceration in a secret prison. Whilst citizens took to the streets outside the Semperoper in 1989 to demonstrate for democracy and human rights, director Christine Mielitz staged the liberation opera Fidelio in a contemporary prison courtyard complete with a watchtower and barbed wire.
Contingents for your and your guests:
3, 10, 18, 23 April & 2 May 2027
Ferdinando Paër
Leonora
There is an indirect but significant connection between Beethoven and opera history in Dresden that is likely to be unfamiliar to many, namely via the opera Leonora ossia L’amor conjugale by Ferdinando Paër, a former Kapellmeister in the city. Premiered on 3 October 1804 at Dresden’s Kleines Kurfürstliches Theater, this work was based on the same text by Jean Nicolas Bouilly that would serve as the libretto for Beethoven’s own opera just a few months later. Experience a strong woman who fights for freedom, justice and truth.
Premiere 24 April 2027
Contingens for you and your guests:
27 April & 4, 9, 14, 20 May 2027
Beethoven. Four days. Nine symphonies.
Each concert features Beethoven’s symphonies alongside the world premiere of a commissioned work by Jörg Widmann, Riccardo Pamfili, Jesús Torres and Clara Iannotta.
Beethoven Ⅰ
Aufbruch
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21
Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op. 60
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
14 April 2027
Von Helden und Antihelden
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 Eroica
15 April 2027
Naturgesänge
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 Pastoral
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
16 April 2027
An die Freude
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
17 April 2027
Bookable together with Fidelio on 18 April 2027 as a package with a 30 per cent discount
on the normal price (seating categories 1 to 6, subject to availability).
Beethoven Ⅱ
Aufbruch
Symphony No. 1 in C major, Op. 21
Symphony No. 4 in B flat major, Op. 60
Symphony No. 5 in C minor, Op. 67
28 April 2027
Von Helden und Antihelden
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 36
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 Eroica
29April 2027
Naturgesänge
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 Pastoral
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92
30 April 2027
An die Freude
Symphony No. 8 in F major, Op. 93
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
1 May 2027
Together with Leonora on 27 April 2027 and Fidelio,
as well as Chamber Music Evening N° 7, all on 2 May 2027,
available to book as a series with a 30 per cent discount on the normal price (seat categories 1 to 6, subject to availability).
Seasonal tipps for your stay in Dresden
In addition to your visit to the Semperoper, Dresden offers a wide range of possibilities.
Dresden Event Calendar