Arabella

Although she is surrounded by many admirers, Arabella dreams only of the «right one». She finds him in Mandryka, the Croatian landowner. Opera history’s final idealized marriage of love was written on the precipice of disaster: The opera dates to a time of deep social insecurity. The operetta-like tone of Strauss’ «Lyrischer Komödie» is strangely fractured. When it premiered in Dresden in 1933, it was instrumentalized by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Director Robert Carsen doesn’t ignore the socio-political context and relocates the plot to the height of the Third Reich. The cast includes Diana Damrau, Michael Volle, and Pavol Breslik.