2025 New Year’s Eve Concert with Kirill Petrenko and Benjamin Bernheim

The Süddeutsche Zeitung writes about “most beautiful tenor voice since Luciano Pavarotti”, while Die Welt speaks of “vocal perfection”: on New Year’s Eve, Benjamin Bernheim will bring the emotions of grand opera to the stage of the Berliner Philharmoniker under the baton of chief conductor Kirill Petrenko. His first appearance begins with Lenski’s melancholic words: “Where have you gone, oh golden days of my spring?” Because his friend Onegin has made advances to his fiancée, Lenski must duel with him. On the night before this fateful day, he senses that he will die, so this aria becomes a triple farewell: to his fiancée, to his friend and to life.

The tragic ending of the love story between Romeo and Juliet is also well known. In the aria Bernheim sings from Gounod’s opera, the tragedy is still far off – Romeo has just fallen in love and, standing in the garden beneath Juliet’s balcony, imagines how her sun-like face outshines the stars. The couple’s story also inspired Tchaikovsky to write an orchestral fantasy whose love theme Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov described as one of the most beautiful melodies in Russian music.

Georges Bizet prophesied with regard to his colleague Jules Massenet, “This young man will soon surpass us all”. The French composer took on Goethe’s Werther, a work dominated by intense emotions. In the aria “Pourquoi me réveiller”, the protagonist laments the detachment of his beloved Charlotte – here, too, the disastrous ending is already on the horizon. Blossoming love is at the heart of Don José’s Flower Song, in which he seeks to win Bizet’s heroine Carmen, and describes to her how she has inflamed his passion.

Between the joys and torments of love, the Philharmoniker escape the Berlin winter with sun-filled music such as Chabrier’s sparklingly orchestrated España, and George Gershwin’s Cuban Overture, inspired by the fiery rhythms of the Caribbean.

Berliner Philharmoniker

Kirill Petrenko

Benjamin Bernheim