The Magic Flute & Faust

Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte and Goethe’s Faust are the two front-runners on German-language stages. Die Zauberflöte was staged in 47 different productions and performed 494 times with a total of 308,000 people watching in the 2011/2012 season, according to the Deutscher Bühnenverein (German stage association) that just published a report including 507 major German-language theatres.

Among the top ten are mostly classics – for a good reason, according to Rolf Bolwin, director of the Deutscher Bühnenverein: "The houses know that if you schedule Die Zauberflöte and Faust and the directing doesn’t go wrong, those are the pieces that make money." But with Daniel Glattauer’s Gut gegen Nordwind and Roland Schimmelpfennigs Der Goldene Drache, more modern plays can also be found in the top 25.