The Barock-Fest
The Barock-Fest at the Schwetzingen Palace Rokokotheater has been introducing audiences to rare Baroque operas for over fifteen years.
The festival is by now firmly established in the German cultural landscape, with performances having repeatedly been prized as the »rediscovery of the year« by media in the field. Each festival centres around a new production of one particular piece as well as offering high quality concerts in the rooms of the elector's summer residence, where famous guests such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Christoph Willibald Gluck and Friedrich Schiller are known to have been received in the past.
While the first years were focused on works by Antonio Vivaldi, a range of Neapolitan operatic works enjoyed their cyclical rediscovery from 2011 onwards. Since 2019, artistic directors Ulrike Schumann and Thomas Böckstiegel have trained the spotlight of the Winter in Schwetzingen festival on the rediscovery of German Baroque composers.
Das Barock-Fest 2023/24
On the occasion of the 350th anniversary of German composer Reinhard Keiser (1674–1739), the Baroque festival Winter in Schwetzingen will centre around one of his operas again. An invitation to the renowned Telemann-Festtage in Magdeburg in 2024 and a successful coproduction of Keiser’s opera »Ulysses« together with the Theater Biel-Solothurn in the previous year, have ensured that the topic is carried on.
We were able to win the well-known Baroque recorder player and conductor Dorothee Oberlinger as artist in residence for our festival season 2023/24. She will be conducting the opera »Nebuchadnezzar«, while also appearing in the concert programme of the Baroque Festival.
This year’s concert programme will focus on travelling, a theme reflected in the programmes of stars from the early music scene.
