Strauss & Wagner 

CBSO

Town Hall & Symphony Hall Birmingham
Thu 21 May 2026

7.30pm

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Experience all the drama of romance with Wagner and Strauss.

In the mood for high romance? This beguiling programme explores love in all its forms, from seduction to passion to spiritual transfiguration. Wagner’s monumental opera Tristan und Isolde opens with a breathtaking Prelude and ends with the devastating Liebestod: the ultimate resolution of love in death. Don Juan, meanwhile, swashbuckles his way through seductions before losing his life in a duel. Love of a more mysterious kind can be found in Strauss’ fantasy from his opera Die Frau ohne Schatten, a fable of love, sacrifice and missing shadows. Soprano Nikola Hillebrand sings the Liebestod and some of Strauss’s most ardent songs, sensitively led by Fabien Gabel.