Overview of all festivals 2024/2025
We’re excited to introduce you to the festival year 2024 in Baden-Baden with a special emphasis on the term festival. If, as some sources report, it was really Hector Berlioz who first used the term “festival” in 1830, we in Baden-Baden have a special duty to bring the festival back to the center of our work. The French composer took the festival idea to the cultural haven of Baden-Baden, which for some time was simply known among French summer guests as the “7th Arrondissement ”– the artists' quarter, the “place to be” in old Paris. We are confident that the future belongs to the festival. Encounters over a period of several days together with explorations and reflections in the echo chamber of the festival venue lead to lasting nourishment for the soul.
17.5. - 26.5.24
Whitsun Festival Baden-Baden
SWR SymphonieorchesterAt the Whitsun Festival we bridge the gap between Europe and Hollywood. Long ridiculed, film music is now an independent branch of musical modernism. It focuses less on avant-garde and more on applicability, and incidentally familiarises the audience with dissonances and other modernisms. "Cinema" is something like the sun at Whitsun, but there are other planets: Look forward to jazz, chamber music, British and Russian symphonies. Instead of outer space, the festival begins in the inner space of the soul - with a song recital by Camilla Nylund and Helmut Deutsch.
13.7. - 21.7.24
La Capitale d'Été
Summer Festival Baden-BadenBeethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto is still sometimes called the "Emperor's Concerto". And worthy of an emperor is the programme of this summer festival, as always with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who this time will conduct the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe. The goddess who leans towards the emperor is, as so often with Yannick, the magnificent Joyce DiDonato, who can do everything vocally and stylistically - this time Berlioz, Mahler and Brahms. In between, a man whose piano tone shines like mother-of-pearl: the South Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho.
26.9. - 13.10.24
The World of John Neumeier
Dance FestivalIn the dance festival "The World of John Neumeier," the master choreographer becomes a curator: he shows his own works and invites exciting companies, such as the "Joffrey Ballet" from Chicago in 2024. Above all, however, John Neumeier provides personal insights. In 2024, Neumeier's ballets based on American models are on the program. All home productions, exclusively curated for the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden.
15.11. - 23.11.24
La Grande Gare
Autumn Festival Baden-BadenAn autumn of enlightenment and confidence. In other words, what is needed at the moment, and uplifting to boot, both spiritually and politically. Did you know that in the 19th century, the great oratorios contributed to the formation of a self-confident citizenry? People met to sing, cry, laugh and dream of a better world. Haydn's "Creation" with its chaos and its paradise acted as an initial spark. By Mozart's "Requiem", a holy seriousness had taken hold of everyone. As always, the whole thing will be conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock, who will bring his Balthasar Neumann Ensemble with him. Hengelbrock will also present Gluck's Iphigenia opera in concert.
12.4. - 21.4.25
Easter Festival Baden-Baden
Berliner PhilharmonikerJoy 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.