The ultimate queer Sci-Fi hybrid Grand opéra!
Orlando
Olga Neuwirth
Premiere in Germany
Imagine being immortal and witnessing four centuries of history firsthand—first as a man, then as a woman...
A favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, the young English nobleman Orlando is showered with honours and estates—and henceforth, ceases to age. After an unresolved love affair with the beautiful Russian Sasha, Orlando withdraws from society, determined to become a poet. Disappointed once again, he then takes up a diplomatic post in a distant conflict zone. There, after a trance-like sleep lasting a week, Orlando awakens as a woman. With this change, she discovers that she’s lost all her property ownership rights in England. In search of freedom, Orlando journeys through centuries of patriarchal rule, witnessing Baroque decadence, Victorian morality, countless wars, and the rise of the digital age. Orlando’s own non-binary child embodies the fluidity of identity, challenging every notion of duality. As a poet, Orlando writes against simplification and populism, and as a time traveller, Orlando continuously reimagines the present.
A favorite of Queen Elizabeth I, the young English nobleman Orlando is showered with honours and estates—and henceforth, ceases to age. After an unresolved love affair with the beautiful Russian Sasha, Orlando withdraws from society, determined to become a poet. Disappointed once again, he then takes up a diplomatic post in a distant conflict zone. There, after a trance-like sleep lasting a week, Orlando awakens as a woman. With this change, she discovers that she’s lost all her property ownership rights in England. In search of freedom, Orlando journeys through centuries of patriarchal rule, witnessing Baroque decadence, Victorian morality, countless wars, and the rise of the digital age. Orlando’s own non-binary child embodies the fluidity of identity, challenging every notion of duality. As a poet, Orlando writes against simplification and populism, and as a time traveller, Orlando continuously reimagines the present.
Virginia Woolf dedicated her visionary novel Orlando to her lover Vita Sackville-West in 1928. In the opera Orlando, which premiered in 2019, the Austrian composer Olga Neuwirth continues the fictional biography into the present day and embarks on her own musical journey through time, from madrigals to electronic music. Director Ewelina Marciniak brings this kaleidoscopic work on the fluidity of time, style and gender roles to a German stage for the first time in this new production by the Komische Oper Berlin.
A fictional musical biography [2019]
Libretto by Catherine Filloux and Olga Neuwirth
based on the novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf
Libretto by Catherine Filloux and Olga Neuwirth
based on the novel of the same name by Virginia Woolf
Premiere on May 16, 2026
The production contains depictions of sexual violence against children.