Opera in the 2026/27 season of the Municipal Theatres in Bremen and Bremerhaven and Oldenburg State Theatre
Bremen, Bremerhaven and Oldenburg recently presented their 2026/27 seasons. The links below provide access to the overall season brochures, while the following focuses on the respective programmes for music theatre.
Bremen continues to be run by a team for a further season until the general artistic manager designate, Armin Petras, takes over as of 2027/28. For the music theatre section, for the 2026/27 season, Marco Štorman, who has a strong track record of directing opera with the company, will take over from the outgoing chief music theatre director, Frank Hilbrich, who in turn takes up a new role as artistic manager of Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen. Štorman will direct three of the eight new music theatre productions of the 2026/27 season, starting with Innocence by Kaija Saariaho, first produced in 2021 at the Aix-en-Provence festival, and subsequently produced in 2024 at the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen and in 2025 in the Semperoper Dresden and most recently at the Met in New York. Sebastian Schwab’s Der Räuber Hotzenplotz has been billed as a family opera: it takes a very popular children’s story of the same title as its basis. With Bizet’s Carmen, Theater Bremen attends to the operatic canon. For New Year’s Eve, Marco Štorman directs Paul Abraham’s operetta revue The Flower of Hawaii. Der Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber follows. A contemporary, new project, Der Engel von Bremen, seeks to shed new light, in the contexts of music theatre, on a notorious murder case in Bremen in the early 19th century. Gounod‘s Faust will be presented as a concert, and Martinů’s The Greek Passion, directed by Štorman, concludes the new productions of the season. There will also be revivals from previous seasons of Die Zauberflöte, Sissy and La bohème.
The announcement of the 2026/27 season of the municipal theatre of Bremerhaven was much anticipated locally for two important reasons. One of them worrying: over the last summer, the theatre had to implement a cut in expenditure of 300,000 €, as only the beginning of its share in balancing a troubled annual municipal budget. The other reason for anticipation was a much more exciting one: 2026/27 is the first season of the new general music director, Marco Comin. He launches the season with Verdi’s Luisa Miller, which he conducts. This is followed by The Bartered Bride by Smetana, conducted by the company’s First Kapellmeister, Davide Perniceni. A Night in Vienna by Johann Strauss represents the company’s seasonal operetta, conducted by Hartmut Brüsch. Comin conducts concert performances of Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saëns as well as a new production of Hercules by Handel. Towards the end of the season, all sections of the municipal theatre Bremerhaven will work together on a production created as part of Bremerhaven’s celebration of its 200th anniversary, which Davide Perniceni will conduct.
The Oldenburg State Theatre enters the third season under general artistic manager Georg Heckel. Over the current season, efforts to find a new General Music Director were not successful; therefore, for 2026/27, the theatre works with Vito Cristofaro continuing in the role of chief conductor for opera, and Leslie Suganandarajah as chief conductor for concerts. The music theatre season starts with a new production of La forza del destino by Verdi. A classic of musical, The Sound of Music, follows. As a special project, a production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice is followed by the first German production of Manfred Trojahn’s take on the Orpheus myth in Eurydice – Die Liebenden, blind (Eurydice – The lovers, blind). It received its world premiere in 2022 at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, followed by the first Austrian production in 2025 by Neue Oper Wien. General artistic manager Georg Heckel directs a new production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and a production of Fidelio by Beethoven completes the range of new opera productions for 2026/27. A production of Ein Wenig Farbe (A Touch of Colour) by Rory Six, an intimate musical premiered in Vienna in 2018, and with later productions across Germany and alleged plans for a production in the UK and elsewhere, completes the music theatre season of Oldenburg State Theatre. The musical Cabaret will be revived for the second season, while Xerxes, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Im weissen Rössl and Wozzeck are revived from the 2025/26 season.
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
For 2026/27 news about Theater Bremen click here, Municipal Theatre Bremerhaven click here and Oldenburg State Theatre here.
Photo above of the Bremen team [l-r]: Samir Akika, resident choreographer; Saskia Scheffel, dramaturg in the Youth Theatre section; Franziska Benack, co-head of theatre; Marco Štorman, co-head of the music theatre section; Swantje Markus, commercial manager), Frederike Krüger, co-head of the music theatre section; Nathalie Forstmann, co-head of the young performers department in the youth theatre section; Alexandra Morales, co-head of the dance section and Dr. Stefan Bläske, co-head of the theatre section.