Stage director Axel Ranisch interweaves two works, resulting in a coming-of-age fairy tale on family, love, knowledge and self-determination: Mavra and Iolanta are becoming Mavra / Iolanta.

Production of the Munich Opera Festival 2017. The plot of Carl Maria von Weber's romantic fairy opera, which premiered at London's Covent Garden in 1826, is quite astonishing: after the fairy king Oberon has fallen out with his wife Titania, it is humans of all people who are supposed to make things right. Titania will only be reconciled if a human couple proves the truthfulness of their love to the death. Oberon's servant Puck already has someone in mind: the crusader Hüon of Bordeaux, who loves the caliph's daughter Rezia.

Liberation opera, revolutionary artwork, an ode to fidelity in love and utopian drama – Fidelio, Beethoven’s only opera, is all of these things. The numerous characterisations and interpretations add an aura of mystery to the opera but demonstrate above all that it is a unique work of musical theatre that expresses the hope for a humane future with justice and liberty for all. The stage direction is in the hands of the Ukrainian director Andriy Zholdak. His visual imagery, replete with symbols, is reminiscent of great film directors such as Andrei Tarkovsky and Ingmar Bergman. Using a distinctive style, Zholdak explores the deeper layers of the universal human drama of Fidelio. These layers can sometimes be difficult to follow.