The French composer Ambroise Thomas belongs to a group of composers who were laureates of the Grand Prix de Rome a(including Gounod and Bizet). With this first production of opera Hamlet in Croatia, we shall mark the composer’s 200th birth anniversary.

The unexpectedly shifted interpretation of the mediaeval legend about a love potion, gives the story a new meaning where people are able to offer goodness and love even without the help of a magic elixir.

It was not until his third opera Jenufa that Leos Janacek succeeded to affirm himself as one of the leading opera composers of the 20th century. The Zagreb audience had the opportunity to acquaint itself with this opera far back in 1920. Its last staging in the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb took place in 1946.

The entire world is marking the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Gustav Mahler’s death. How to come closer to the renowned conductor and composer if not through his music; through sounds from prehistoric times which demand complete attention and the intensive power of intimacy?

In Cooperation with Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Austria

Romantic love, mortal jealousy and obsessive desire for revenge are the dramatic driving forces of Verdi’s The Troubadour.

In Cooperation with Mainfranken Theater Würzburg

Parsifal is an amazing and enigmatic work. Did Wagner, at the end of his life, decide to glorify the asceticism he had never practised? Or he kneeled in front of the crucifix, as Nietzshce claimed?

Immediately after its world premiere in 1874, The Bat became a byword for operetta genre. Operetta in Vienna was made after the French model of the popular works by Meilhac and Halevy, who remain famous as the librettists of Bizet’s Carmen

The witch Hillary has won two tickets for the opera in a radio game and she is not completely sure whether to be happy or disappointed about it. Opera? What can that be?

Nikola Šubić Zrinski by Ivan Zajc is one of the rare works of that author that has kept its place on the repertoire of Croatian opera houses. The story describes the death of one of the most famous members of the aristocratic Zrinjski family after the long lasting Turkish siege of Siget in 1566, during which sultan Suleiman the Great died without succeeding to get to Vienna.

With its tunes and deeply moving story, taken from the real life, La Bohème has earned the epithet of one of the most successful and most renowned operas in general. Libretto was based upon the novel Scènes de la vie de bohème by Henri Murger, in which the author describes the world of the students and artists in the Latin Quarter in Paris.

Bizet’s Carmen had its world-premiere in Opera Comique in Paris on March 3, 1875. The theatre was packed with the intention to bring a unanimous public opinion about the new opera which had developed from the court amusement into burgeois property of the Western civilization.

Should we consider The Magic Flute a fairy-tale or an allegory? Or is it only a secret testimony of the freemasons? There is probably no other opera which offers the possibility of so many different interpretations, which is so simple and at the same time more complex than any other opera work.

The most popular and most frequently performed Croatian opera Ero the Joker had its world-premiere in Zagreb in 1935 and has not left the repertoire of all Croatian opera houses ever since. Its enormous popularity and international success is the result of the ideal cooperation between the writer Milan Begović and the composer Jakov Gotovac. The exceptional humour of the libretto stems from the perfect vitality of the characters from the Dalmatian hinterland, completed by the richly orchestrated music of lively rhythm. The opera abounds with beautiful arias, duets and ensembles, with the popular wheel dance for the finale.