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SCENES FROM TWO MARRIAGES

OPERA EVENING WITH TWO ONE-ACT OPERAS

in German, semi-staged

Musical Direction & Arrangement:Aris Alexander Blettenberg

Direction & Adaptation:Felix Scharff

Soloists and ensemble of the Munich Chamber Opera

PREMIERE AUGUST 5, 2026, at the Silbersaal, Deutsches Theater München(semi-staged)

A production of the Munich Chamber Opera 

Who wears the pants in a marriage?The correct answer would be: No one, because they just get in the way. Yet, both then and now, men like to see themselves as the heads of the household.

In the intermezzos“Pimpinone”byGeorg Philipp Telemannand“Il segreto di Susanna”byErmanno Wolf-Ferrari, these male self-images are dismantled with obvious delight. What was intended to be a confident order turns out to be a fragile facade: Here, the dapper yet overwhelmed Pimpinone; there, the jealously suspicious Count Gil—two men who fail not so much because of their wives’ infidelity as because of their own notions of how marriage is supposed to work.

The women? Vespetta and Susanna act with that blend of intelligence, pragmatism, and subversive wit that quietly but permanently undermines the men’s fantasies of control. In the end, little remains of the claimed authority other than a pose and the realization: In a relationship, you can’t hide anything—and certainly not yourself.

With “Scenes from Two Marriages,” the Munich Chamber Opera presents a double bill starting August 5, 2026, inthe Silbersaal of the Deutsches Theater München, showcasing comic opera for what it can be: a precise tool for dissecting male self-delusions—and a view of the fragile balance of cohabitation that is as entertaining as it is accurate.