Search

Millions of people attend music theatre performances in Germany every year. Half of the over 11,000 events are opera performances, followed by dance, musicals and operettas.

Germany’s jazz scene has an extremely wide range of styles and institutions. With its players and artistic results, the scene can present itself with confidence.

Germany has a tightly-knight network of orchestras . Despite financial challenges and structural changes, Germany’s publicly financed orchestras have continuously expanded their programmes.

Mozart's ‘The Magic Flute’ was the most performed opera of the 2020-21 season. Under the pandemic conditions, works that are performed less frequently appear in the ranking.

‘Die Fledermaus’ by Johann Strauss and ‘The White Horse Inn’ by Ralph Benatzky were Germany's most performed operettas of the 2020-21 season.

National productions continue to make up a large part of the German longplay charts. International productions are becoming more popular again.

In 2019 and 2020, national productions dominated the German singles charts. Most recently, the ratio of national and international productions was balanced.

Almost 239,000 pop and classical recordings were available on the German music market in 2022, 73 % of which were audio albums in the pop segment. About 14,500 titles were new releases.

Pop music achieved the largest share of music industry's turnover in 2022, though significantly less than in the noughties. The hip-hop and rock genres were also strong in terms of turnover.

Germany's states differ in the number of weekly hours they allot to music lessons. Music can be a mandatory or compulsory elective subject under its own name, or a component of larger learning areas.

Music is anchored in the curricula of Germany's states in almost all grades 5 to 10. However, there are differences in the quantity of music lessons to be taught.

Public music schools offer a variety of instrumental and vocal subjects. Piano, guitar, violin, recorder, percussion and flute have the highest numbers of pupils.

Public music schools had approximately 1.4 million pupils in the calendar year 2021. Particularly in the younger age groups, pupil numbers declined in the pandemic years.

With almost 6,200 schools and 5,100 kindergartens, most of the cooperation partners of public music schools are educational institutions. Many music clubs are also partners.

The 2020-21 season data document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on orchestra operations. Concert and attendance figures declined significantly.

With only 3,205 opera, operetta, musical and dance performances and 685,000 visits to these events, the consequences of the pandemic on theatre operations in the 2020-21 season are profound.

At German theatres, non-permanent artistic staff was strongly affected by the pandemic. Figures of other staff groups only slightely decreased.