In Hans Scharoun’s celebrated Großer Saal, the Filharmonie Brno and three international soloists turn 2 November 2026 into an evening of contrasts – intimate arias, thunderous overtures and one of the most beautiful rooms in music.
The setting can shape a concert almost as much as the performance itself. At the Operngala-Nacht on Monday, 2 November 2026, the Philharmonie Berlin provides an extraordinary setting for an evening of opera and orchestral music.
The room first. When Hans Scharoun’s Philharmonie opened in 1963, it broke with every convention of the concert hall. Instead of a stage at one end and rows of seats facing it, he placed the orchestra near the centre and let 2,440 seats rise around it in irregular terraces, so that no listener is far from the players and everyone can see everyone. Herbert von Karajan conducted the opening night; the hall has been home to the Berliner Philharmoniker ever since and is regularly named among the finest acoustic spaces in the world. Its golden, tent-like silhouette remains one of the defining images of Berlin’s Kulturforum.
Then the music. Maestro Prof. Arkady Beryn brings more than forty years on the podium and a reputation for interpretations of architectural clarity – a quality that suits Scharoun’s hall, where he has conducted before, as he has in the Golden Hall of the Vienna Musikverein and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Chief Conductor of the Internationale Symphoniker Deutschland from 2003 to 2011, he has led the Berliner Symphoniker, the Camerata Salzburg and the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and worked with artists from Aida Garifullina and José Carreras to Maxim Vengerov and Daniel Hope. The Filharmonie Brno – founded in 1956 and one of the Czech Republic’s foremost orchestras – performs the programme, which combines well-known operatic arias and duets with orchestral works, moving between Mozart, Rossini, Puccini, Verdi, Bizet, Tchaikovsky and other composers. The gala format places the three voices alongside the full orchestra, alternating between solo, ensemble and symphonic moments.
And the voices. Tenor René Barbera – the first singer to win all three top prizes at Operalia, and a fixture at the Met, La Scala and the Opéra de Paris – brings two arias of pure lyricism, “Che gelida manina” and “Una furtiva lagrima”.
Baritone Florian Sempey, the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres whose Figaro has conquered Paris, London and Pesaro, supplies the fireworks: “Fin ch’han dal vino”, the Toreador Song and “Largo al factotum”.
Soprano Alisa Medvedeva, a Saint Petersburg Conservatoire graduate who has shared stages with Andrea Bocelli, sings Musetta’s waltz “Quando me’n vo” and Giulietta’s “Oh! quante volte”, and joins Sempey in “Là ci darem la mano”. The Brazilian showpiece “Tico Tico no fubá” and the Brindisi from La traviata close the evening.
The idea behind the format is simple. A single voice can shrink a 2,440-seat hall to a whisper, a full orchestra can expand it again a moment later. Scharoun’s architecture was built for exactly that play of scale – which is why an opera gala, of all things, sits so naturally in a hall designed for symphonies.
Tickets from €26.50 are available via Eventim; the concert begins at 20:00.
