Name: Arabella
Start: 2025-03-07
End: 2025-03-20
Location: Deutsche Oper Berlin

ARABELLA is the last collaboration between the acclaimed duo Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss. Adopting the tone of an operetta, the work portrays the existential hardships, obsessions and dreams of a society bereft of its traditional solidity.

Russell Braun als Mandryka, Elena Tsallagova als Zdenka, Sara Jakubiak als ArabellaThomas Aurin

Elena Tsallagova als Zdenka, Robert Watson als MatteoThomas Aurin

Doris Soffel als Adelaide, Elena Tsallagova als Zdenka, Gabriela Scherer als ArabellaThomas Aurin

Albert Pesendorfer als Graf Waldner, Russell Braun als MandrykaThomas Aurin

Elena Tsallagova als Zdenka, Sara Jakubiak als ArabellaThomas Aurin

Elena Tsallagova als Zdenka, Albert Pesendorfer als Graf Waldner, Russell Braun als Mandryka, Sara Jakubiak als Arabella, Robert Watson als MatteoThomas Aurin

Elena Tsallagova als Zdenka, Doris Soffel als Adelaide, Russell Braun als Mandryka, Sara Jakubiak als Arabella, Albert Pesendorfer als Waldner, Robert Watson als MatteoThomas Aurin

Russell Braun als Mandryka, Sara Jakubiak als ArabellaThomas Aurin

Gambling addiction has driven the family of cavalry officer Waldner into financial ruin. The only hope for salvation lies in marrying off the daughter Arabella into a wealthy family ...

Conductor: Sir Donald Runnicles
Director: Tobias Kratzer

With

Albert Pesendorfer, Doris Soffel, Jennifer Davis, Heidi Stober, Thomas Johannes Mayer, Sean Panikkar a. o.

About the work

Vienna, circa 1860. The financially strapped Count Waldner is lodging with his family in a Viennese hotel. His only path to solvency is for him to secure an advantageous marriage for one of his two daughters – and the family can only afford to present Arabella, the eldest, in the upper circles of society.

To conceal the family’s indigence, the parents have raised Zdenka as a boy, dressing her accordingly.

Arabella is not short of suitors but has resolved to wait for ‘Mr Right’. When Mandryka, an aristocrat from a distant region, arrives, he and Arabella are instantly smitten. Arabella only asks to be able to bid farewell to her friends and suitors at the Fasching ball that evening.

At the ball, Arabella says goodbye to her admirers. There is also the young officer Matteo, with whom Zdenka is secretly in love and with whom she has formed a friendship under the guise of her disguise as a boy. Matteo, however, desires Arabella and is distraught when he realises the hopelessness of his love.

Zdenka devises a plan: she fakes a letter from Arabella in which she promises Matteo a night of love together. But instead she wants to wait for him herself in the darkness of the hotel room. Mandryka learns of Arabella's alleged infidelity and goes to the hotel with the ball guests to surprise Arabella in flagrante delicto.

Arabella, innocent of this, is initially shocked and saddened by Mandryka’s suspicions but forgives him when the mix-up is revealed for what it is. The two agree to marry, as do Zdenka and Matteo.

About the production

Richard Strauss’s orchestral richness and opulence coupled with the period Viennese setting of the work led to ARABELLA being falsely pigeonholed as a light-hearted comedy of errors from its 1933 premiere onwards.

In the estimation of Tobias Kratzer, however, who triumphed at the Deutsche Oper with his production of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s THE DWARF, this final collaboration between Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal marks a collision of two world views: the traditional roles of men and women on the one hand – as expressed in Arabella’s famous solo “Und du sollst mein Gebieter sein” – and a modern idea of social interaction on the other – as illustrated by Zdenka with her questioning of gender-based identities.

Here, Kratzer turns the spotlight on this disunity between the various character portrayals in ARABELLA and explores these role-specific tensions on a continuum stretching from 19th-century Vienna to the present day.

approx. 3 hours 30 minutes | Two intermissions

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Additional information

In German with German and English surtitles

Lyrical Comedy in Three Acts Poem by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
First performed in Dresden on 1 July 1933
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 18 March 2023

Pre-performance lecture (in German): 45 minutes prior to each performance

Participating artists

Sir Donald Runnicles (Musikalische Leitung)

Tobias Kratzer (Inszenierung)

Rainer Sellmaier (Bühne, Kostüme)

Clara Luisa Hertel (Kostümmitarbeiterin)

Jeroen Verbruggen (Choreografie)

Stefan Woinke (Licht)

Jonas Dahl (Video)

Jeremy Bines (Chöre)

Manuel Braun (Video)

Bettina Bartz (Dramaturgie)

Albert Pesendorfer (Graf Waldner)

Doris Soffel (Adelaide)

Jennifer Davis (Arabella)

Heidi Stober (Zdenka)

Thomas Johannes Mayer (Mandryka)

Daniel O'Hearn (Matteo)

Thomas Cilluffo (Graf Elemer)

Kyle Miller (Graf Dominik)

Gerard Farreras (Graf Lamoral)

Hye-Young Moon (Fiakermilli)

Karis Tucker (Eine Kartenaufschlägerin)

Jörg Schörner (Welko)

Michael Jamak (Djura)

Robert Hebenstreit (Jankel)

N. N. (Ein Zimmerkellner)

Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin (Chöre)

Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin (Orchester)

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