Music mediation is at the heart of WorkshOpera — though not in the traditional sense of concert pedagogy. Instead, it is directly embedded into the concepts of each production.

The collective made its debut with Nozze ohne Arien, a version of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro that dispensed with arias and recitatives. The story was told exclusively through ensemble scenes and narration. Inspired by the fantasy role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, the RPG Zauberflöte followed, in which Mozart’s most famous opera was staged as a live role-playing game together with fantasy fans, and the audience had to complete challenges throughout the performance. And because the two entertainment formats share the same name, the collective brought Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto to the stage as a soap-opera-style telenovela adaptation — without recitatives but with voice-over narration.

All of this culminated in the opera gala celebrating the collective’s fourth anniversary: there, the WorkshOpera parodied the format of the traditional opera gala — while still allowing their deep love for the art form of opera to shine through.

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That WorkshOpera can also be serious was demonstrated with Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden and the world premiere of Ricardo Acosta’s Il Perro Perdido. Their motto: art must entertain, and entertainment can also be serious. Opera is versatile and full of emotion — and WorkshOpera shows exactly that.

In 2024, the collective collaborated with several ensembles: a family version of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte delighted audiences young and old, while the triptych 3 (Ver-)Suchungen, in collaboration with the Sinfonietta Bern, opened up musical perspectives from the 20th and 21st centuries.