Classical fans in Missouri know the dynamic German maestro Matthias Pintscher as the music director who recently toured their very own Kansas City Symphony to the legendary concert halls of Amsterdam, Berlin, and Hamburg. In Paris, he has served for a decade as music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, founded by Pierre Boulez in the spirit of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. Between titled positions and guest conducting at top institutions all over the world, Pintscher would seem to have little time for serious composing, yet in that department he’s a player, too. In January, on the eve of his 55th birthday, he unveils at Berlin’s Staatsoper unter den Linden his first new opera in more than two decades. Das Kalte Herz (The Cold Heart), which he conducts himself, is his fourth in this genre. Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg’s libretto derives from a tale by the short-lived German Romantic Wilhelm Hauff, a follower of the great E. T. A. Hoffmann. The Faustian fairy tale concerns a lowly charcoal burner named Peter, who swaps his heart for a stone to achieve worldly success. But unlike Faust, Peter has two supernatural agents on his case, which complicates his quest for salvation. The fact that Pintscher’s opera is in 12 scenes suggests many a twist and turn. The director is James Darrah, a 36-year-old American with close ties to the most inventive and unpredictable operatic creatives. The part of Peter falls to Samuel Hasselhorn, 35, another in the unending parade of young German baritones upon whose shoulders the classical music world yearns to place the mantle of the late Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. —Matthew Gurewitsch