HAPPENING 17 APRIL 2026 | O. will take over Kunsthal Rotterdam for a special edition of Friday Night LIVE. Inspired by the exhibition Flowers Forever, the evening brings together music, theatre, opera and club culture, while all exhibitions stay open until 22:00.
Image: BEYOND THE BALL (2025) by Birgit Bijl
Visitors arriving between 17:00 and 19:00 will receive a free welcome drink, turning the start of the evening into a relaxed entry point before the performances begin. The event places O. right at the centre of the Kunsthal for one night, giving you a preview of the festival’s artistic world ahead of O. 2026.
The programme moves across different styles and moods, which fits the way O. presents itself in Rotterdam. Rather than treating opera as a closed tradition, the festival continues to mix it with performance, theatre, pop influences and wider urban culture.
Performances across the evening
One of the headline works is Mama Always told me not to run in the Dark by Viana Afoumou (BE/CM). The piece is described as a hypnotic loop performance in which Little Red Riding Hood returns in ghostly horror form.
Aqueerius brings BEYOND THE BALL, a baroque-wave musical centred on Julie d’Aubigny, remembered as an opera diva, duellist and queer icon long before such language was common. Soprano Bauwien van der Meer and mezzo-soprano Anna Traub will also perform the well-known Flower Duet from Lakmé.
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First look at O. 2026
The evening also offers an early look at Metropolis 2126, a production imagining life in Rotterdam one hundred years from now. That preview ties the night neatly to the wider ambitions of O., which continues to look for new ways to connect opera and music theatre to the city around it.
The closing musical set comes from DJs Ays, Lotus and Bobby, giving the night a club finish after the live performances. That mix of stage work and DJ culture says a lot about the way O. wants to position itself in Rotterdam, open, cross-genre and curious.
About O.
O. presents itself as a festival for curious audiences and uses opera as a starting point rather than a boundary. Its programme is built around adventure, emerging makers and connections between genres, ranging from performance and electropop to street culture and the Dutch sentimental song tradition.
Since the start of 2021, O. has been the new name of what was previously known as Operadagen Rotterdam. After fifteen years under that title, the organisation kept its history but changed its name to match broader ambitions and a more open artistic identity. The slogan remains: “Hear Something You’ve Never Seen.”
