Hamburg: Opera & 'Elphi' - Music, art & architecture in Germany’s second city

Hamburg is a city of industry, of exchange, a Hanseatic powerhouse. Yet its position as a gateway between Germany and the rest of the world, alongside its financial success and prestige throughout much of German history, has made it a creative city, home to a rich musical and artistic heritage.

The first public opera house in Germany, the Oper am Gänsemarkt, was established in Hamburg in 1678. While the current theatre of the Staatsoper Hamburg reopened in 1955 after its destruction in 1943, the sense of continuing a long-standing tradition still remains.

Enter, then, the Elbphilharmonie – or ‘Elphi’ – an architectural, cultural and civic masterpiece by Herzog & de Meuron that dominates, and lifts, the city’s harbour and its image. Yes, it ran over budget and over schedule, but the fact remains that Hamburg believed in it and built it. The acoustic is almost ‘digital’ in its clarity and tickets are hard to come by.

Verdi and Wagner, Maestro and Meister: the two towering opera composers of the 19th century — born on opposite sides of the Alps in the same year of 1813 — never seem far from each other, and two of their most popular middle-period works, Il trovatore and Lohengrin, feature at Hamburg’s Staatsoper. The one-time music director of this theatre was another great composer, Gustav Mahler. In this very musical city’s much talked-about new hall, the Elbphilharmonie, we hear another Romantic masterpiece, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, plus the world premiere performance of a version of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante in which the second and third movements are reflected through the mirror of the contemporary British composer Sally Beamish.

Our tour also includes a daily session of talks and discussions about the evening’s performance. There are guided walks and visits to a further selection of Hamburg’s architecture and sites of musical heritage, but also plenty of free time for rest and preparation for the next event.