Overview of all festivals 2024/2025

Joy is sure to fill the air when the Berliner Philharmoniker returns to the festival in the Black Forest. Baden-Baden pays tribute to the marvelous musicians and their chief conductor Kirill Petrenko. Featuring Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and the Baden-Baden debut of young Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä together with a chamber music program to be announced later in the year, Baden-Baden and the Berliner Philharmoniker are once again pulling out all the stops for this festival.

In 2025, we are celebrating the 100th birthday of the composer, conductor, philosopher and cosmopolitan Pierre Boulez with his music and works that inspired him. The SWR Symphonieorchester, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Ensemble intercontemporain and stars such as Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Antonio Pappano take you into his cosmos.

In summer you go on holiday, rest and regenerate, which means you head to Baden-Baden: For the whole nineteenth century, this is the way it was done. Since what should remain as it was has to change, we are actively shaping the future of the "Summer Capital of Europe" and opening a new stage this year in the world-famous Gönneranlage. The Summer Festival will spread out into the city, winning over new classical music listeners and achieving the impossible: a "silent disco," for example, that appeals to a young audience while being considerate of the surrounding environment. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, something like the unofficial king of the city for nine fabulous days, opens – now outside – this year's Summer Gala. Finally, the Festspielhaus stage pays homage to Mozart. In addition to the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, the conductor has brought along an orchestra from his home country: Canada’s Orchestre Métropolitain de Montréal. 

In the dance festival ‘The World of John Neumeier’, the master choreographer becomes a curator: he shows his own works and invites exciting companies. Above all, however, John Neumeier provides personal insights. You watch, marvel at the art of the dancers and can look forward to next year. In 2025, Neumeier's Russian ballets will be on the programme. All classics, curated exclusively for the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.

When does the modern age actually begin? The usual answer is "around 1900," but for cultural history, the era of constant questioning already begins with Romanticism. Specifically, with Beethoven and Rossini, the most famous composers of their time, who were each driven in their own way. We are presenting Rossini's fairy tale La Cenerentola (Cinderella) – a signature role, by the way, of the great Pauline Viardot, a resident of Baden-Baden. Beethoven's Seventh Symphony and Rossini's operas brought the mechanical frenzy into music around the time when the term "railway" was first mentioned. Shortly afterward, the work of J. S. Bach was rediscovered, an occasion to pause and savor the event – and to found many middle-class choirs. What would German democracy be without its choirs and associations, those social training grounds of self-determination? Growing beyond ourselves: this is what everyone will experience who participates in our European Singfest.

Since The Snow Queen was premiered in 2015, the ballet ensemble of the National Opera of Ukraine in Kiev has repeatedly presented the work in Ukraine and abroad, in recent years increasingly as a sign of resistance and self-empowerment. Despite the difficult living and working conditions, the company pursues their artistic passion and works on maintaining something like a day-to-day life, in this way acting as a perfect ambassador for their home country.