Matthias Langhoff

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Matthias Langhoff (born May 9, 1941 in Zurich ) is a German theater director .

Matthias Langhoff, 2011

Matthias Langhoff is the son of the actor and director Wolfgang Langhoff , brother of the director Thomas Langhoff and father of the author Anna Langhoff and the director Caspar Langhoff . He is considered one of the most important theater directors in the German-speaking and French-speaking countries.

Life

Langhoff began as an assistant director at the Berliner Ensemble and in 1963 brought out his first directorial work. 1969 began his collaboration with Manfred Karge at the Berliner Volksbühne , with whom he staged together from 1978 in the West, especially in the Federal Republic of Germany (including 1980–1983 in Bochum ), in Austria and France. From 1989 to 1991 he was director of the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Lausanne . After his return to Berlin he was co-director and partner of the Berliner Ensemble in the 1992/93 season.

Today he lives in Paris and works internationally as a freelance theater and opera director. Langhoff is, among other things, a member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts and an officer of the Légion d'honneur in France. Langhoff was married to Michèle Wolf, the daughter of Stephanie Eisler , from his second and third marriage (with the actress and director Laurence Calame) he has three children: Anna , Anton and Caspar Langhoff (also director).

Theater career

Langhoff began together with Manfred Karge as a director at the Berliner Ensemble under the direction of Helene Weigel . Langhoff and Karge's first production in 1963, Das kleine Mahagonny, was a great success. As a young director duo, they worked from then on at the Berliner Ensemble and represented this theater as early as the 1960s with guest appearances in France, England and other socialist countries. In the 1970s, the director duo moved to the Volksbühne, where, together with the then artistic director Benno Besson and the directors Fritz Marquardt , Heiner Müller , the set designer Gero Troike and other well-known GDR artists, they designed the famous Volksbühne era after 1945, which the Today's director Frank Castorf , when he took over the house after the fall of the Berlin Wall, moving in and supporting it in terms of both content and aesthetics.

In 1977, after the director Benno Besson left the GDR, the director duo Karge / Langhoff began to work and live increasingly in the West. Geneva, Bochum, Hamburg, Vienna were the cities in which they staged the big houses. In the mid-1980s they ended their collaboration and from then on staged separately. Karge, who is also an actor, wrote plays quite successfully, Langhoff increasingly worked in French-speaking countries until he moved to Paris . Today he is one of the most famous international directors whose productions are legendary in France too. He also worked a. a. in Italy, Greece, Spain, Switzerland.

For a short time in the 1990s he led the Berliner Ensemble in Berlin together with Heiner Müller , but stepped down from the directorship. He published the reasons for this in the printed matter published by the Berliner Ensemble in a letter to the Senator for Culture . Langhoff owes important world premieres to authors like Thomas Brasch and Heiner Müller, with whom he had a lifelong friendship.

Productions (selection)

  • 1963 Das kleine Mahagonny , Brecht, Berlin
  • 1966: Bertolt Brecht : The Bread Shop (Brecht Evening No. 4) - Direction with Manfred Karge ( Berliner Ensemble )
  • 1967: Bertolt Brecht: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny - Direction with Manfred Karge (Berliner Ensemble)
  • 1969: Aeschylus : Seven against Thebes - Direction with Manfred Karge (Berliner Ensemble)
  • 1973: Henrik Ibsen : Die Wildente - Direction with Manfred Karge ( Volksbühne Berlin )
  • 1974: Francisco Pereira da Silva : Speckhut - Direction with Manfred Karge (Volksbühne Berlin)
  • 1974: Christoph Hein : Schlötel or Whatever - directed with Manfred Karge (Volksbühne Berlin)
  • 1975 The battle , Müller, Berlin
  • 1978 Fatzer Fragments , Brecht
  • 1979 King Lear , Shakespeare, Rotterdam
  • 1980 Woyzeck , Büchner (Langhoff named his production Marie. Woyzeck , see Theater heute , 1981/22)
  • 1985 cut-off date , Hürlimann
  • 1986 Prawda , Brenton / Hares, Hamburg
  • 1988 Miss Julie , Strindberg
  • 1988 Oedipus, tyrant , Müller
  • 1989 The assignment , Müller
  • 1989 The green cockatoo , Schnitzler
  • 1992 Greed under elms , O'Neill, Rennes
  • 1993 Simon Boccanegra , Verdi, Frankfurt / Main
  • 1993/94 Three Sisters , Chekhov, Rennes
  • 1995 Richard III. , Shakespeare, Avignon
  • 1996 Dance of Death , Strindberg, Paris
  • 1999 Don Giovanni , Mozart, Geneva
  • 1999 The Trachinierinnen des Sophokles or Macht Liebe Tod , Thomas Brasch after Ezra Pound, Berlin
  • 2001 The Auditor , Gogol, Genova
  • 2002 Lenz, Leonce and Lena , collage based on Büchner, Paris
  • 2009 In the thicket of cities , Brecht, Linz
  • 2009 Un Cabaret Hamlet , Théâtre de l'Odéon Paris
  • 2009 Dieu comme patient , after Lautréamont, Théâtre de la Ville Paris
  • 2010 Measure for Measure , Shakespeare, Hungarian State Theater Cluj Napoca

Filmography

Honourings and prices

  • 1993 Awarded the title of officer of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Minister of Culture
  • 1993/94 from the Association of Theater and Music Critics in Paris
  • 1994 Award for Chekhov's Three Sisters as the best play of the season

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Langhoff, Matthias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater director
DATE OF BIRTH May 9, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich