Operetta in four acts by Jacques Offenbach | German-language premiere
Advance ticket sales start: June 9, 2026
Libretto by Hector Jonathan Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy | German by Ludwig Kalisch and Frank Haders-Wuthenow
In German with German and Polish surtitles
Orpheus and Eurydice are the quintessential dream couple of antiquity. The mythology-loving opera stage celebrates them in various musical variations: as an azione teatrale per musica by Christoph Willibald Gluck or as a favola in musica by Claudio Monteverdi. While the latter work ends in transfiguration and the former concludes with the couple's wedding, Jacques Offenbach takes a different path. In his version, Orpheus and Eurydice are plotting a divorce. But after Eurydice's sudden death, an unusual authority figure shows up: Public Opinion. She orders Orpheus to plead with Jupiter for his wife's life, out of consideration for mythology, morality, and for the sake of his peers, descendants, and the environment. But this is just the beginning of a hilarious journey through Elysian fields and infernal terrain…
Jacques Offenbach's international career began in 1858 with Orpheus in the Underworld. While the initial version was still a chamber play featuring a can-can and a hellish gallop, he expanded it in 1874 into an opéra féerie, arguably creating the first revue operetta in music history. The witty plot was enriched with spicy spectacle, choral tableaus, and ballet scenes. The Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater Görlitz-Zittau is proud to present the German premiere of the long-lost ballet music Le Royaume de Neptune as part of this new production.
This is a continuous multi-day event
