Rheinsberg classical festival draws 7,028 visitors mid-season, nearing last year's total of 8,306

Festival draws growing audiences

The Kammeroper Rheinsberg's 2026 summer season appears to be enjoying growing popularity, with organisers drawing a positive interim balance well before the season closes. Harald Hildwein, managing director of Musikkultur Rheinsberg, reported that the festival has already welcomed 7,028 visitors in Rheinsberg, with the summer not yet over. For comparison, the full 2025 season drew 8,306 visitors across its entire run. With the season's headline production still running and additional programming ahead, this year's partial attendance already approaches last year's full-season total.

Blaubart in the castle courtyard

The season's actual highlight was still pending when the interim balance was drawn: since Friday, Grétry's opera "Blaubart" has been staged in the Schlosshof, the castle courtyard of the Rheinsberg palace complex. Hildwein connected the choice of work to Rheinsberg's most famous resident, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, whose 300th birthday the town is celebrating this year. Heinrich attended the opera's 1789 Paris premiere, a moment that coincided with the eve of the French Revolution.

Prince Heinrich himself was present in Paris in 1789 at the premiere of Grétry's "Blaubart", shortly before the French Revolution shook Europe.

The courtyard production restages a work directly tied to the prince's biography and to the broader European upheavals of the period. Rheinsberg's celebration of the 300th anniversary of Prince Heinrich's birth provides the thematic framework for this year's festival programming, with "Blaubart" serving as the anchor production in the castle where the prince once resided. The choice of Grétry's work for the courtyard staging ties the festival's musical programme to the historical figure at the centre of this year's anniversary celebrations.

Political and cultural resonance

Brandenburg's culture minister Manja Schüle (SPD) linked the production to the anniversary year and described "Blaubart" as a genuine rediscovery. She connected the year of the opera's 1789 premiere to events that reached Rheinsberg itself, when refugees from revolutionary France sought shelter in the town. The minister's remarks placed the production within both the local jubilee context and the wider historical moment of the French Revolution and its aftermath.

The opera Blaubart fits perfectly with this jubilee year. Not only because it is a genuine rediscovery. But because the upheavals of the Revolution in the year of the premiere in 1789 were felt as far as Rheinsberg, when emigrants from France found refuge here.

A season still in progress

With 7,028 visitors counted so far and the summer programme continuing, the festival stands within reach of last year's total of 8,306. The run of "Blaubart" in the Schlosshof remains ongoing, and the Kammeroper Rheinsberg's season extends beyond the current reporting date. The 300th-anniversary programming around Prince Heinrich has brought a historically themed production to the courtyard of the Rheinsberg castle, pairing the attendance gains with a season built around a single jubilee theme. The town's celebration of the prince's tercentenary continues alongside the festival's remaining summer schedule.