(Photo Credit: Gunnar Geller)

Komische Oper Berlin has announced the cancellation of the remainder of its 2020-21 season.

The opera house said that due to the current epidemiological situation in Germany, it was forced to end the season prematurely.

The season 2021-22 should be announced on June 22, 2021 and is set to open with the premiere of Enescu’s opera “Œdipe” on August 29, 2021.

The Komische Oper Berlin thus joins a growing list of German opera houses that have decided to prematurely end the 2021-22 season, including the Oper Köln, the Semperoper Dresden and Theater Bonn.

The German Parliament has adopted changes to the Infection Protection Act, providing the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s federal government the power to impose drastic COVID-19 measures without consultation of the federal states. Cultural venues and leisure facilities must stay closed until the seven-day incidence rate drops below 100 for five consecutive days.

The huge uncertainty originating from the federal legislation thus forces German theaters to consider early end of the 2020-21 season.

The seven-day incidence in Berlin currently stands at 121.7.