The chorus members appear on stage at the Hamburg State Opera in a different role almost every night. Now sailors, now gipsies, now pilgrims or conspirators, then courtiers, hunters, the deranged or the imprisoned. In the role of schoolchildren they sit in short trousers on over-sized wooden benches in Wagner’s “Lohengrin“, as the squabbling theatre audience they interact in Prokofiev’s “Love for Three Oranges”, and as the oppressed people in Mussorgsky’s “Boris Godunov” they celebrate a fraudster as new Tsar– the men and women of the opera chorus demonstrate their artistic prowess, their flexibility, and their love of the stage in every performance.
Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera, »Il Turco in Italia«
With its around 70 members, the chorus of the Hamburg State Opera has for many years been one of the world’s best opera choruses. The varied repertoire – almost always in the language of the original – is multifaceted and includes baroque operas and dramatic operas, the major works of Verdi and Wagner as well as contemporary pieces. The outstanding artistic merit of the chorus had the stamp of Professor Jürgen Schulz from 1981 to 2002. At the start of the 2002/2003 season, Florian Csizmadia took over the post of Chorus Master.
