On 24 September, the Mariinsky Theatre welcomed distinguished guests: the National Ballet of Cuba. The performance took place as part of the programme of the 12th St Petersburg International Cultural Forum, and the company chose the classical ballet Giselle, which has long been almost as beloved by Russian audiences as their own.

On 26 September, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden presented the premiere of Gaspare Spontini’s La Vestale. Despite the legendary performances featuring Maria Callas and Franco Corelli at La Scala in 1954–1955, as well as Rosa Ponselle’s historic recordings, whose portrayal of Julia became a true example of vocal artistry, this opera remains largely unknown to the wider public and appears only rarely in the repertoire of today’s opera houses. Its return to the Berlin stage was

From 4 to 13 September, the inaugural Kirill & Friends Berlin Festival brought theatre, film screenings, exhibitions and artist talks to venues across the city. The invitation carried a wish to reunite people whom recent years have scattered across cities and countries. This made Ivan Estegneev’s Demon’s Sorrow, presented on the festival’s final day, all the more poignant: a story of a reunion that can no longer happen.

Bayreuth is marking the festival’s 150th anniversary with an experiment: the new Ring transports Wagner into a world of AI, projections, and an almost complete rejection of traditional stage action. But can technology replace dramatic tension? After Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, Julia Pneva, editor-in-chief of Voci dell’Opera, was left with more questions than answers — and one of the most unexpected is this: if all that remains on stage are singers and visual projections, d

Edward Clug's A Midsummer Night's Dream is undoubtedly one of the most compelling productions to have entered the Staatsballett Berlin repertoire in recent seasons. Milko Lazar's percussive score and Clug's distinctive movement vocabulary evoke the spirit of antiquity, recalling an era when rhythmic percussion and expressive physicality formed the essence of ritual and dance.

On July 4, Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin presented the premiere of a new production of Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera Samson et Dalila — a work that had already been part of the theatre’s repertoire. The leading roles were performed by Roberto Alagna and Aigul Akhmetshina, for whom the role of Dalila marked her debut on the stage of Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

From June 25 to 28, 2026, the premiere series of Anna Karenina, a ballet set to music by Ilya Demutsky and staged by Maxim Sevagin, took place on the Main Stage of the Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko Music Theatre. The premiere was presented as part of the 2026 Cherry Forest Open Arts Festival.

Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, directed by Ruth Berghaus, has returned once again to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. This production has been part of the theatre’s repertoire since 1991, and that fact alone gives the evening a special aura: what appears on stage is not merely another revival, but an encounter with the theatre’s history, with a particular aesthetic, and with the artists through whom many of us once discovered opera.

On 20 June, the Hamburg Ballet gave the premiere of Alexei Ratmansky's two-act Wunderland. Shown as part of Hamburg's Tanztriennale, the production opened the 51st edition of the celebrated Hamburger Ballett-Tage (Hamburg Ballet Days), the festival founded by John Neumeier in 1975.

The premiere of the ballet evening Fearful Symmetries took place in Berlin, bringing together one-act ballets by George Balanchine and Christian Spuck. The programme opened with one of Balanchine’s most celebrated works – Symphony in C, set to music by Georges Bizet.

On May 8, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf premiered John Neumeier's A Streetcar Named Desire — a ballet by one of the most legendary choreographers of our time. It was with this very production that the Hamburg Ballet opened its 50th and final season under Neumeier in 2023. And though A Streetcar Named Desire enjoys less popularity with companies than, say, The Lady of the Camellias — currently running in Munich and Paris this season alone — it is precisely this ball

Ballet Director Laurent Hilaire concluded Ballet Festival Week 2026 with an overall attendance of 100 per cent. The opening event was the premiere of the new triple bill Common Ground on Saturday, 28 March 2026, in which choreographers Alexander Ekman and Johan Inger presented their work to the Bavarian State Ballet audience in Munich for the first time. Common Ground refers to a shared basis of human coexistence, and thus the audience can expect a performance that conveys an

On April 6, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden hosted the final performance of this season’s premiere of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Un Ballo in Maschera. The production brought together renowned performers, such as Anna Netrebko, Boris Pinkhasovich, and Charles Castronovo.

It is striking how fates and meanings echo across time. After his legendary defection from the USSR in 1961, Rudolf Nureyev was declared a traitor to the Motherland and sentenced in absentia to imprisonment. And now, decades later, in modern Russia, a ballet about him – a man who became a symbol of freedom in the art world - is stigmatized and pushed aside.

When a ballet classic is reborn, it carries within that mixture of nostalgia, expectation and electric tension that only the truly great works can evoke. John Neumeier’s Nutcracker, back in the repertoire of the Bavarian State Ballet since 2 November 2025, is such a work.