Neuköllner Oper

Neuköllner Oper is a 200-seat music-theatre venue in Berlin’s Neukölln district, with a studio that holds up to 50. Its defining feature is the main room: a historic ballroom in Passage Neukölln, where an artist-founded company brought its previously roaming work into a permanent home in 1988. For a showgoer, the scale points toward a close-range theatrical experience, built for staged music instead of grand-opera distance.

A roaming company finds its ballroom

Composer and church musician Winfried Radeke founded Neuköllner Oper in 1977. His independent group rehearsed and performed in churches until 1981, then worked from a factory loft while appearing on different theatre stages. That itinerant beginning shaped a house devoted to flexible, independent music theatre.

The decisive change came in 1988, when the company took over the Passage Neukölln ballroom on Karl-Marx-Straße. The Passage itself dates to 1909, making the room a retained piece of local architecture inside a purpose-built contemporary programme.

A second turning point arrived in 1996, when Radeke brought writer-director Peter Lund into the artistic leadership. Lund’s 1998 musical Das Wunder von Neukölln became a substantial local success, playing over 100 times and later touring as far as Switzerland. His period in leadership ran through 2004 and helped establish a house style centred on German-language musical theatre with a sharp local frame.

The room today

Neuköllner Oper operates as a private theatre with public and project funding, and its programming seeks emerging talent alongside established artists. The repertory moves across musicals, opera and operetta adaptations, new compositions and crossover work; the current artistic leadership, begun with Rainer Simon for the 2025/26 season, foregrounds contemporary pop culture and exchange with North Neukölln communities. The historic ballroom is the main draw, while the smaller studio creates a second, distinctly intimate format.