In 2025, the whole of Vienna will celebrate the 200th birthday of waltz king and operetta superstar Johann Strauss. The anniversary year will fascinate with unique productions that convincingly transport the composer's oeuvre into the present.
In Vienna, the metropolis of joie de vivre and the waltz, the coming year 2025 will be all about Johann Strauss Jr., who was born on October 25, 1825 in the suburb of Sankt Ulrich. And so the Danube metropolis is celebrating "200 years of Johann Strauss" from January 1 to December 31 with a superb program (director: Roland Geyer) that includes a wide range of unique productions, innovative projects and visionary interpretations: classical concerts as well as newly interpreted operettas, circus as well as dance and film, performances as well as installations and scientific projects. There are 65 productions and three exhibitions to experience at locations in all of Vienna's districts, which are divided into the program pillars PUR, MIX and OFF - depending on how much the works of Johann Strauss and his biography have been processed and reinterpreted in the respective artistic realizations. This comprehensive interpretation of Strauss's oeuvre will be visible in concentrated form and in an excitingly contemporary way on "Fledermaustag", a wonderful highlight of the first half of the year. The composer's operettas, which were overloaded with clichés by later generations, will also be brought convincingly into the present in the anniversary year. In addition, several very special projects will be presented below, including a unique happening and a captivating circus spectacle.
Projection artist MODULUX © Modulux
April 5, 2025: Long live the bat!
On the birthday of the bat - it was premiered on April 5, 1874 in the Theater an der Wien - Johann Strauss' most famous operetta flutters through springtime Vienna in various guises. The anniversary year is dedicating a diverse, all-day program to this day for bat enthusiasts from 3 to 99 years old, and the Museumsquartier (MQ) in particular will be the setting for a series of extraordinary events:
For example, you can experience a highly topical discussion about bats and the resulting inspiring visions of the future as part of “Creatures of the Night”. Here, the internationally outstanding techno producer, DJ and ecologist Dominik Eulberg counters the dark side of current social and ecological developments with a positive new utopia with a multimedia biodiversity show and the subsequent techno club “Bat Rave”: biodiversity versus monoculture, socially and ecologically. With “In Beat of Time”, an audiovisual mapping show created by the projection artists MODULUX is on the program in the main courtyard of the MQ from nightfall, in which projection and sound merge into a spectacular homage to bats: the facade of the MuseumsQuartier becomes a magical screen that takes the audience on an overwhelming journey through time through the Strauss universe from 1825 to the present day. The brilliant Janoska Ensemble, whose incredibly imaginative improvisations regularly receive ovations in concert halls, is also devoting itself to Die Fledermaus in the MQ and presents the famous melodies from the operetta in enchanting arrangements and with virtuoso spontaneity. There is also a lot for the kids to experience on "Fledermaus Day", with great events in the Dschungel Wien and in the ZOOM Children's Museum! Finally, a few more tips: In the adjacent Volkstheater, the famous melodies from Strauss's Die Fledermaus will be rewritten with modern instruments in the exemplary production Villa Orlofsky, specially conceived for the anniversary year (directed by Paul-Georg Dittrich). In the fall, a new Fledermaus will also be staged in the Musiktheater an der Wien in a production by Stefan Herheim (from October 4, 2025). On New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, Otto Schenk's famous production of Die Fledermaus will also be performed at the State Opera, and at the Volksoper there will even be around 15 opportunities to experience the legendary operetta that is so closely associated with Vienna in 2025.
World premiere of Zeitenwalzer by theaternyx* in the Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel
In the spotlight: six very special Strauss projects
Johann Strauss is also happily present in the Prater: The highly recommended premiere of Zeitenwalzer by theaternyx* allows you to dance back and forth through the centuries on the Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel. The carriages float like time capsules through almost 400 years of city history, and as travel companions, characters and voices make excerpts of a process of change visible with their stories and performances. With the music of Johann Strauss, visitors travel through time and move from one century to the next with the carriages. With each turn, the "Wheel of Time" allows a view of a city that appears new again - a utopia hovers over Vienna (January 19 to December 14, 2025). Also on the programme for the first time in Austria is the mammoth work Sleep by the British composer Max Richter: This "lullaby for a hectic world" focuses on human life and invites participants in the Arsenal's painting room on an eight-hour nighttime journey in which they slip into sleep to the music of Strauss and Richter. Richter invites you to pause and see sleep not as a mere interruption of the day, but as a conscious, valuable state that regenerates and grounds. Specially designed to accompany listeners through all phases of the sleep cycle, the performance of this mammoth work ends with the first rays of sunshine over a leisurely Viennese breakfast (March 8, 2025). Another exemplary project is the escape room "Shadows of Doubt - In the Head of Genius" by the renowned Austrian artist Deborah Sengl in collaboration with Time-Busters in the MQ. Based on the historical figure Johann Strauss, an unusual escape room is being created that allows participants to engage with the inner and outer life of the artist. At the same time, it is intended to stimulate reflection on one's own wishes, desires and fears. In this way, the journey through the inner life of Strauss and oneself could lead to different ways of thinking and acting (January 3 to December 31, 2025). In cooperation with the Ars Electronica Futurelab, an exceptional new waltz symphony will also be created in the anniversary year of 2025, which will be premiered in the MQ: As a pioneering collaboration between man and machine, it will be created by four young composers who will collaborate with the AI-based composition system "Ricercar" (November 27, 2025).
“Lightning and Thunder” at the Odeon © Kat Menschik
In the magnificent Odeon, the world premiere of "Blitz und Thunder" by Jacqueline Kornmüller examines Johann Strauss' unrequited love for the young Russian composer Olga Smirnitskaja. Milena Michiko Flašar answers Johann Strauss' letters to Olga Smirnitskaja with music by Johanna Doderer and Johann Strauss (25 January to 15 February 2025). And on Vienna's Heumarkt, the Circus Theater Roncalli will be performing the brilliant musical circus spectacle Cagliostro. Based on motifs from the operetta Cagliostro in Vienna, successful author Thomas Brezina has written a circus operetta for the whole family: In the magical atmosphere of the circus tent, the rousing melodies of Johann Strauss meet impressive acrobatic acts (10 to 28 September 2025).
Sparkling Stars from Strauss' Operetta Cosmos
The anniversary year 2025 also enables an incomparable journey through the Straussian operetta cosmos with top-class performances of masterful compositions and convincing scenic interpretations that anchor the operettas of the Waltz King in the here and now. For example, the operetta The Queen's Lace Cloth is on the program as a new production at the Musiktheater an der Wien (director: Christian Thausing; from January 18, 2025). At the same location, appropriately in the middle of Carnival, The Carnival in Rome is also an adventurous, gender-confused love story from the carnivalesque artistic milieu; the concert performance with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra under the conductor Patrick Hahn will be moderated by Nikolaus Habjan together with a puppet and will shine with a wonderful ensemble (February 22, 2025). The world premiere of The Song from the Edge of the World or The Gypsy Baron (director: Nuran David Calis) is of course eagerly awaited: On the occasion of the 200th birthday of its composer, the operetta, which is so explosive in terms of content, is being given a musical and literary rewrite by Andreas Schett and Markus Kraler (Musicbanda Franui) as well as librettist Roland Schimmelpfennig, which makes the tensions contained therein visible and places them in a contemporary context (from March 25, 2025, MQ/Hall E).
Franz Welser-Möst © R. Mastroianni
At the Musikverein, star conductor Franz Welser-Möst will also embark on a journey of discovery into the operetta cosmos of Johann Strauss with Christiane Karg, Piotr Beczała and the Vienna Philharmonic: The artists, who are acclaimed around the world, will present a brilliant "operetta pasticcio" (March 29, 2025). With the operetta Waldmeister, a very special gem will be presented in the Strauss anniversary year: Around two decades after Die Fledermaus, the composer, together with his librettist Gustav Davis (1856–1951), created this hymn to sensual pleasure, in which the aim is to bring order not only to love affairs, but also to botany. The successful Austrian director Josef E. Köpplinger is now rediscovering this wonderful, but now little-known jewel for the stage (from April 25, 2025, MQ/Hall E). In June 2025, Strauss' first operetta - with a slightly adapted title: Indigo and the 23 Robbers - will tour all 23 districts of Vienna in a travel format, and in August, in the gorgeous Schönbrunn Palace Theater, Wiener Blut will be staged imaginatively and with wit by the aforementioned young director Nikolaus Habjan (from August 10, 2025).
Finally, we will take a brief look ahead to autumn 2025, as two spectacular new productions will be staged at the Volksoper for the anniversary year: One can look forward to an exciting interpretation of the dazzling operetta A Night in Venice (directed by Nina Spijkers; from October 25, 2025) as well as a new fairytale operetta, which will be developed and premiered on the basis of Strauss's ballet fragment Cinderella (from November 29, 2025).
www.johannstrauss2025.at
