Nele is a young call center agent who moonlights as a cloakroom attendant at the State Opera. When she falls in love with the small-time street dancer Kolja, she must confront the demons of her past and descend into the underworld. At the same time, talent scout Höllbach notices Nele's singing talent and offers her a great opportunity for a career as an opera singer. Axel Ranisch's modern adaptation of Orpheus and Eurydice is a cinematic opera pastiche between Puccini, Handel and Christian Steiffen.

Nothing is for forever. And people make mistakes. And yet, letting go is the hardest challenge when you're burning with love for the first time and want nothing more than to hold on to it forever. But can you feel as intensely forever as you did in the beginning? Così fan tutte in Benedict Andrews’s new production deals with the exuberant feelings that drive young love in the rush of hormones. Sometimes it touches the fringes of human relationships, where one threatens to lose oneself in the search for intensity. Thus the two young couples, who think they have already discovered the essence of true love, meet two experienced counterparts in Don Alfonso and Despina. An experiment begins in which the men put the fidelity of their partners to the test by playing a game of disguise. What remains is disillusionment. And the possibility of a painful realization: only freedom and the longing for union are certain. Disappointment and rejection are part of the game – because no love is ideal.

What if Don Juan were a woman? At the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, director David Hermann presents a bold and modernist reinterpretation of Mozart’s opera, elevated by the collective excellence of its cast.

The Ruhr Piano Festival is one of two stops on the German tour of pianist Hélène Grimaud and baritone Konstantin Krimmel. In Dortmund, the duo has chosen to combine lieder by Johannes Brahms with those by Valentin Silvestrov, a Ukrainian composer in exile, in a program imbued with rare emotional power.