About the work
Orlando is an opera by Olga Neuwirth, which she describes as a "fictional musical biography". It was premiered on 8 December 2019 at the Vienna State Opera — the first full-length work by a female composer in the house's more than 150-year history. The libretto by Catherine Filloux and Olga Neuwirth is based on Virginia Woolf's novel "Orlando" (1928). Neuwirth's score reaches from the madrigal to electronic music and styles itself a "queer Sci-Fi hybrid grand opéra".
Plot
In search of freedom, the central figure Orlando journeys through the centuries: from the Elizabethan age through Baroque decadence and Victorian morality to wars and the digital present. On this journey through patriarchal forms of rule, Orlando changes from man to woman while barely ageing — sex, time and identity remain fluid. A narrator (with distinct features of Woolf's lover Vita Sackville-West) accompanies and comments on the path. As a poet, Orlando writes against simplification and populism; Orlando's own non-binary child finally embodies the complete permeability of all gender boundaries. Neuwirth carries Woolf's narrative, which reached up to 1928, compositionally onward into our own present.
Cultural significance
Orlando is one of the most widely noted contemporary operatic works and a milestone: with the 2019 premiere, the Vienna State Opera opened its stage, in the 150th year of its existence, to a full-length work by a female composer for the first time. Neuwirth's music combines orchestra, electronics and spoken theatre with echoes from the Renaissance and Baroque to pop. The German premiere, directed by Ewelina Marciniak and conducted by Johannes Kalitzke, took place on 16 May 2026 at the Komische Oper Berlin. The work is regarded as a significant contribution to questions of gender diversity, identity and social change.