Komische Oper Berlin

Komische Oper Berlin currently plays the 974-seat Schillertheater in Berlin, its temporary main stage during renovation work at the company’s Behrenstraße home. The distinction is built into the evening: this is a producing opera company bringing its own repertory into a 1907 theatre, with a season that spans grand opera, operetta, musicals, family work and contemporary music theatre. The Schillertheater has hosted the company since the 2023/24 season.

A theatre remade for music drama

The company’s architectural story begins in Mitte. Its Behrenstraße core opened in 1891–92 as the Theater Unter den Linden, designed by Viennese theatre specialists Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer for the Actien-Bau-Verein Unter den Linden. After a rebuild, it returned in 1898 as the Metropol-Theater, a home for lavish revues and operetta. Wartime damage reshaped the building’s future: following repair and provisional reconstruction, Austrian director Walter Felsenstein opened the Komische Oper there in December 1947 with Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus. Felsenstein’s actor-centred approach to music theatre set the institution’s artistic course. A 1966–67 reconstruction by Kunz Nierade retained the main staircase and auditorium within a new and expanded complex; the present renovation began in 2023, sending performances west to the Schillertheater and across Berlin.

The room now

Programming is company-led repertory, built around opera and operetta alongside musicals, children’s opera, chamber concerts and experimental music theatre. The 2026/27 plans range from Reimann’s Lear and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly to a Gerhard Kneifel musical and Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. Inside, the Schillertheater’s 974 seats are divided between a main floor and balcony. A lift-equipped accessible entrance reaches the stalls, with four wheelchair places and four companion seats. Komische Oper describes the room as bringing audiences especially close to the stage action.