Role debut as Arabella

Mar 15, 2026

This spring, Diana Damrau makes her much-awaited role debut as the title role in Richard Strauss’ Arabella, after having already sung Zdenka and Fiakermilli in the same opera.

Although she is surrounded by many admirers, Arabella dreams only of the “right one”. She finds him in Mandryka, the Croatian landowner. Opera history’s final idealised marriage of love was written on the precipice of disaster: The opera dates to a time of deep social insecurity. The operetta-like tone of Strauss’ “Lyrischer Komödie” is strangely fractured. When it premiered in Dresden in 1933, it was instrumentalised by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. Director Robert Carsen doesn’t ignore the socio-political context and relocates the plot to the height of the Third Reich.

The performances take place on April 14, 18, 22, 25 and 28, and feature Michael Volle as Mandryka, Anett Fritsch as Zdenka, Wolfgang Bankl as Graf Waldner, Stephanie Houtzeel as Adelaide, Pavol Breslik as Matteo, Johan Krogius as Graf Elemer, Felix Gygli as Graf Dominik, Brent Michael Smith as Graf Lamoral and Yewon Han as the Fiakermilli. Markus Poschner conducts.