Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) is a four-act opera in German by Bernd Alois Zimmermann, based on the 1776 play by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz.

Upon reviewing an early scored version of this idea, however, the Cologne officials, including Wolfgang Sawallisch, advised Zimmermann that it would be impossible to realize ("unaufführbar").

WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) broadcast scenes from Die Soldaten in 1963, but the first staged performance, with Cologne Opera forces conducted by Michael Gielen, did not take place until 15 February 1965, after Zimmermann completed revisions to the score in 1964.

[9] The U.S. premiere was on 7 February 1982 by the Opera Company of Boston led by Sarah Caldwell with Phyllis Hunter as Marie, Beverly Morgan as her sister Charlotte, William Cochran as Desportes, and Joaquin Romaguera as Captain Pirzel.

The opera was given an acclaimed "warehouse" production at Germany's Ruhrtriennale festival in Bochum in 2006, with David Pountney directing and Steven Sloane conducting.

A year later it was staged by Calixto Bieito at Zürich Opera; Marc Albrecht conducted, with Susanne Elmark as Marie and Peter Hoare reprised the role of Desportes he had sung in Bochum, Tokyo and New York.

The Latin American premiere was in July 2016, with critical acclaim,[13] in a new production by Teatro Colón, conducted by Baldur Brönnimann and directed by Pablo Maritano.

The centenary of Zimmermann has been celebrated also in Cologne with a production created by Carlus Padrissa (La Fura dels Baus) in April 2018.

Scene 5 (Nocturno I): Wesener advises his daughter to be cautious in her dealings with Desportes, although he secretly harbours the hope that she may marry the young aristocrat.

When the Colonel and Eisenhardt leave, a jazzy dance begins (Rondeau à la marche), led by the Andalusian waitress: O Angst!

In the room next door, Wesener's aged mother sings the folk song Rösel aus Hennegay with its prophetic line, Some day your cross will come to you.

Romanza (Act 3 Zwischenspiel) Scene 4 (Nocturno II): Gräfin de la Roche reproaches her son, the Young Count, for his behaviour toward Marie.

Scene 3 (Nocturno III): As Eisenhardt sings the Pater noster, Marie, now sunk to the level of a street beggar, encounters her father and asks him for alms.

[4] In addition to the sixteen singing and ten speaking roles, it requires a one hundred-piece orchestra involving many unusual instruments and pieces of percussion.

With its open action, a large number of scenes which at times overlap one another or run simultaneously (the second scene of act 2, for example, or all of act 4), its multimedia structure incorporating film screens, projectors, tape recordings and loudspeakers, in addition to the sound effects of marching, engines and screams, Die Soldaten –an opera composed using the strict rules of twelve-tone music and presenting a high degree of complexity despite its careful design for the stage– is a uniquely complicated opera, both to stage and to watch.

[5] There are numerous unorthodox roles in this opera, but the most noticeable is the mass usage of banging chairs and tables on the stage floor as percussion instruments.

Jazz band: The prelude is written to sound as mechanical as possible, with dissonant combinations of instruments colliding against each other rhythmically to portray the mechanised movements of the soldiers on stage.

As with Alban Berg's operas Wozzeck and Lulu, the individual scenes are built on strict musical forms; strophes, chaconnes, ricercare, toccatas, etc.

[5][16] Musically, the work makes extensive use of twelve-tone technique, and expresses debts to Berg's Wozzeck, such as in the shared name of the principal female role (Marie) and in the number of scenes (15).

Jazz rhythms (as in the coffee house scene), J. S. Bach chorales (from the St Matthew Passion), a folksong and the Dies irae plainchant sequence are juxtaposed and assembled in a way which creates a score which seethes with tension.