Easter Festival Baden-Baden
Berliner Philharmoniker
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.
Program 2025
SA 12.4.25/THU 15.4.25/SU 20.4.25
GIACOMO PUCCINI: MADAMA BUTTERFLY
Kirill Petrenko, Berliner Philharmoniker, New Production: Davide LivermoreGiacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly has been moving audiences since its premiere in 1904. The story of the geisha Cio-Cio-San and the American officer Benjamin F. Pinkerton includes everything that makes a successful opera: great emotions, drama, and sound paintings that showcase the orchestra in all its facets. Director Davide Livermore has already been honored three times to open the season of La Scala in Milan. Jonathan Tetelman almost feels at home in Baden-Baden. He sang the title role in Werther and roused the audience to storms of applause at the season-opening gala in 2024. Butterfly Eleonora Buratto celebrates her Baden-Baden debut with one of her star roles.
SU 13.4.25/SA 19.4.25
AN ALPINE SYMPHONY
Berliner Philharmoniker, Klaus Mäkelä, Piano: Leif Ove AndsnesFinnish conductor and music educator Jorma Panula has a good nose for outstanding talents. Among them is twenty-eight-year-old Klaus Mäkelä, whose career is now taking off. He is already the head of the Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestre de Paris and will soon lead the legendary Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam. Now comes his highly anticipated debut at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with Richard Strauss’s monumental Alpine Symphony. In the first half of the concert, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes will perform Sergei Rachmaninoff's Third Piano Concerto together with the Berliner Philharmoniker under the direction of the exceptional young conductor.
MO 14.4.25
BARTÓK AND BEETHOVEN
Berliner Philharmoniker, Jakub Hrůša, Piano: Seong-Jin Cho"Béla Bartók's mother tongue was Beethoven." This quote by the composer György Kurtág goes right to the heart of this Easter Festival concert under the direction of Jakub Hrůša. It will feature Béla Bartók's monumental Concerto for Orchestra, which the composer wrote in American exile. Ludwig van Beethoven was also surrounded by the tumult of war when he wrote his last piano concerto. It is nicknamed the "Emperor” Concerto, although it is not clear whether this refers to the fleeing Archduke Rudolph or the Emperor Napoleon invading Vienna, from whom Beethoven had actually already turned away by that time. Pianist Seong-Jin Cho enjoys pop star status in his home country of South Korea.
FR 18.4.25/MO 21.4.25
BEETHOVEN SYMPHONY NO. 9
Kirill Petrenko, Berliner PhilharmonikerAlready in its founding year of 1883, the Berliner Philharmoniker included Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in its program. Franz Wüllner established a long tradition in Berlin of distinguished interpretations of this pivotal work of classical music. Hans von Bülow, who loved Baden-Baden, once even offered a double performance of the work, which naturally also received notable interpretations by Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, and Claudio Abbado. On taking up his position in August 2019, Kirill Petrenko stated: "There is only one work with which I can begin my tenure here in Berlin, Beethoven's Ninth." With this symphony, he is now bidding farewell to Baden-Baden.
