Dream, delusion and reality merge into a dazzling operatic experience: Theater Lübeck presents Jacques Offenbach's fascinating legacy with The Tales of Hoffmann - a play between genius and madness, love and illusion.
While "Don Giovanni" is being performed in the opera house, the real show takes place in the wine cellar next door - this is where the poet Hoffmann entertains customers with his fantastic stories in which people turn out to be machines, singing can end fatally and mysterious figures want to rob him of his reflection. The hidden core of each story: his relationship with the singer Stella, who is also performing on stage as Donna Anna in the opera. The longer the evening goes on, the crazier the stories become, until Hoffmann finally threatens to lose his grip on reality ...
It was a sensation when operetta composer Jacques Offenbach announced that he would write an opera for the first time. He worked on the composition until shortly before his death, but was unable to complete it. Loosely based on stories by the Romantic poet E. T. A. Hoffmann, Offenbach tells of the power of transforming one's own life into art and of the danger of blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Premiere January 31
Further performances: February 7 and 19, March 8 and 20, April 19, May 16 and 23, June 5 and 18, 2026
