Winter Festival

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. 

Iván Fischer travelled all the way to Sicily, to an ancient theater, to work on his "third way": a new, self-conceived unity of sound and directing that brings together experiences from staged and concert performances, taking them to a new level. Here, the ear shows the body the way – just like in Mozart's score, which always integrates physical movement with emotions. 

"Our native language is the music of the Habsburg monarchy," says Iván Fischer about his Budapest Festival Orchestra, who will join the artist in devoting themselves to a thoroughly bourgeois Protestant from Germany: Johann Sebastian Bach. Of course, Bach is a musical universalist. And music of any kind only comes to life when different traditions meet in it.

With the National Ballet Bratislava, an exciting young ensemble presents itself to the Baden-Baden ballet audience. Viewers will have the rare opportunity to experience two interpretations of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake in one season: after a version by John Neumeier in autumn, Rudolf Nureyev's classic will follow at the Winter Festival. Nureyev's virtuoso choreography focuses on the prince's inner development. 

Iván Fischer and the Budapest Festival Orchestra present Mozart's Magic Flute in a semi-staged format which Fischer developed at his opera festival in Vicenza. He traveled to the city to work on his "third way": a new unity of sound and directing where the ear guides the body. After last year’s Don Giovanni, Fischer is now conducting an opera at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden for the second time.

"Our native language is the music of the Habsburg monarchy," says Iván Fischer about his Budapest Festival Orchestra. From a "Catholic perspective," the Hungarian conductor is once again exploring the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. He will perform Bach’s popular Christmas Oratorio for the second time in Baden-Baden – including cantatas that were not heard last year.