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The 143rd Theatre Season of the National Theatre in Prague: A Preview of Highlights from Opera, Drama, and Ballet
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The 143rd Theatre Season of the National Theatre in Prague: A Preview of Highlights from Opera, Drama, and Ballet

To mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Richard Wagner Festival Theatre in Bayreuth, the National Theatre is celebrating with performances of the Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy and a new production of Parsifal

By PragueDaily

The artistic directors of all four ensembles of the National Theatre in Prague have announced the performance schedule for the 143rd theatre season. The diverse programme includes not only Czech classics but also international masterpieces. However, the theatre faces a particular challenge as it will temporarily be without the New Scene stage, which is set to undergo extensive renovations at the end of the current season.

Audiences can look forward to seven new opera productions: Mozart’s Idomeneo, Ostrčil’s Legend of Erin, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Václav Trojan’s children’s opera Carousel. In 2026, it will be 150 years since Richard Wagner opened his Festspielhaus in Bayreuth (1876), originally built for the performance of Parsifal, which was still unfinished at the time. The festival also presented the first complete staging of the famous Ring des Nibelungen cycle. The National Theatre and the Prague State Opera will celebrate this anniversary with consecutive performances of the entire Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy (2026–2028) and a new production of Parsifal (2026).

During the renovation of the New Scene (Nová scéna), performances of Laterna Magika will be staged at the Estates Theatre and other Prague venues, including La Fabrika in Holešovice. There, artistic director Radim Vizváry is planning the world premiere of his own production, In the Park. Meanwhile, Miřenka Čechová and Petr Boháč are developing an elaborate multimedia production, Baron Münchhausen, for the Estates Theatre, incorporating film projections, hyper-realistic puppetry, and live music.

Detailed information on individual premieres and accompanying programmes is available in the 2025/26 season brochure and on the National Theatre website.

Národní divadlo (Czech National Theatre)
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