Barrie Kosky

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barrie Kosky (born February 18, 1967 in Melbourne ) is a German- Australian opera and theater director . Today he lives and works in Berlin .

biography

Kosky, the grandson of Jewish-Russian , Jewish-Polish and Jewish-Hungarian immigrants, went to the Melbourne Grammar School , where he appeared on stage in 1981 in Brecht's The Temporary Rise of Arturo Ui and later staged his first play. After training in piano and music history at the University of Melbourne , he turned to directing, but was often on stage in many of his productions or accompanied on the piano, such as in his production of Monteverdi's Poppea . Kosky is openly gay. In 2017 he took on German citizenship.

Career

His productions in Australia include Seneca's Oedipus and Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra at the Sydney Theater Company, Shakespeare's King Lear at the Bell Shakespeare Company, The Golem by Larry Sitsky, Verdi's Nabucco , Wagner's The Flying Dutchman and Alban Berg's Wozzeck at the Sydney Opera House , Oedipus Rex at the Queensland Opera, Goethe's Faust I and II at the Melbourne Theater Company; the modern opera Oresteia by Liza Lim, Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia at Victoria State Opera, The Knot Garden by Michael Tippett and The Burlesque Tour with singer and entertainer Paul Capsis at the Melbourne Spoleto Festival.

From 1990 to 1997 Barrie Kosky was Artistic Director of the Gilgul Theater Company. There he staged Der Dybbuk , Es brennt ... Levad , The Wilderness Room and Der operirte Jud ' - all works with which Kosky addressed questions of Jewish culture and identity.

In 1996 he took over the artistic direction of the Adelaide Festival.

From 2001 to 2005 he was co-director of the Wiener Schauspielhaus . There he directed Euripides' Medea , Boulevard Delirium - an evening with singer and entertainer Paul Capsis, who devoted himself to singing divas from Judy Garland to Janis Joplin . In Shakespeare's Macbeth , Das Verräterische Herz nach EA Poe and the Jewtopia trilogy ( Dafke !! , Der verlorene Atem and Das Schloss ) he once again dealt with Jewish identity and Jewish artists from Kafka to Schumann to Houdini and Sarah Bernhardt . He also showed Poppea - in which he combined the music of Monteverdi with songs by Cole Porter - and Offenbach's Hoffmann's Stories, two productions in which he combined opera and drama.

After his engagement at the Schauspielhaus, Kosky developed into a sought-after opera director in German-speaking countries. He staged Monteverdi's L'Orfeo for the Berlin State Opera and a highly acclaimed Le Grand Macabre by György Ligeti at the Komische Oper Berlin , which was followed by productions of Figaro's wedding and Gluck's Iphigenie on Tauris . In 2005 his production of Lohengrin premiered at the Vienna State Opera . In 2006, he and Tom Wright directed the eight-hour evening The Lost Echo - based on Ovid's Metamorphoses and Euripides ' Die Bacchen - for the Sydney Theater Company. In the same year he staged Wagner's The Flying Dutchman at the Aalto Theater in Essen , causing a scandal; This was followed in December of the same year by Tristan and Isolde ( nominated for the Faust Prize ) and the rise and fall of the city of Mahagonny von Brecht / Weill. At the Komische Oper Berlin he staged Kiss Me, Kate for the 2008/9 season , which was named "Performance of the Year" by the TheaterGemeinde Berlin . Rigoletto (2009/10 season), Rusalka (2010/11 season) and The Seven Deadly Sins (2012) followed at the same house , as in Kiss Me, Kate with Dagmar Manzel in the lead role.

He also staged Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Bremen Theater as well as Peter Grimes and Leoš Janáček's From a House of the Dead for the Hanover State Opera and Vivaldi's Orlando furioso for the Basel Theater .

In autumn 2008 Barrie Kosky made his highly acclaimed debut at the Deutsches Theater Berlin with Strindberg's Ein Traumspiel . The English version of the solo, The Tell-Tale Heart ( Tell-Tale Heart ) he showed at the Edinburgh International Festival and the Sydney International Festival.

In 2009 he started his ring cycle in Hanover, which he completed in June 2011. In 2010 he staged Strauss ' Die Schweigsame Frau at the Bavarian State Opera . In December of the same year, he also directed a double evening with Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell and Duke Bluebeard's Castle by Béla Bartók at the Frankfurt Opera .

In 2010 he directed The Merchant of Venice at the Schauspiel Frankfurt and Rameaus Castor et Pollux at the English National Opera London. The co-production with the Komische Oper Berlin, which was also shown in Berlin from May 2014, received the Laurence Olivier Award in 2011 for the best new opera production.

At the beginning of the 2012/13 season, Barrie Kosky succeeded Andreas Homoki as director and chief director of the Komische Oper Berlin. His opening staging of all three completely preserved operas by Claudio Monteverdi - Orpheus , Odysseus and Poppea -, which could be experienced three times on a single day as a Monteverdi trilogy, received a great response from the audience and the press. Together with Suzanne Andrade and Paul Barritt, the artistic minds of the British theater group »1927«, he surprised everyone in the new production of Mozart's Magic Flute with a novel combination of live singers and cinematic animation. In June 2013, Paul Abraham 's jazz operetta Ball im Savoy, premiered in 1932, followed suit with Dagmar Manzel, Katharine Mehrling and Helmut Baumann in the leading roles. His contract was extended to 2022 in 2014.

In October 2013, the Komische Oper Berlin was voted “ Opera House of the Year ” by the specialist magazine Opernwelt with its program for the first season under Barrie Kosky .

Kosky's production of Gluck's Armide premiered at the Amsterdam Opera House in October 2013 . For the future, productions are planned in Zurich, Glyndebourne and Frankfurt.

In May 2012 Kosky was appointed as a new member of the Berlin Academy of the Arts , which he accepted. Active membership presupposes that the artist actively participates in the tasks of the academy so that he will continue to be present in the academy in the future.

His staging of Schönberg's Moses und Aron in 2015 received worldwide attention .

In 2014 Katharina Wagner was able to win Kosky for the production of Richard Wagner's Meistersinger von Nürnberg at the Bayreuth Festival 2017. Numerous Jewish artists had already worked in Bayreuth, but Kosky, who was known for his debates with Judaism and Wagner's anti-Semitism, became the first Jewish director. He understood the figure of Beckmesser from the Meistersinger as the embodiment of the fear of the assimilated Jews: »It was the fear that a poison bomb lurked in the German garb that the German wants to destroy: The Jews look like us, they talk like we, but at heart they are not like us, they want to poison our culture. «He saw the city of Nuremberg as a German utopia, its true face the Nuremberg Laws or (depending on the interpretation) the Nuremberg Trials .

In September 2018 he appeared on stage with a Stalin T-shirt at the final applause of the premiere of the opera Die Gezeichen by Franz Schreker . Jan Brachmann stated in the FAZ: "His empathy with the victims of violent regimes is visibly selective."

For the 200th birthday of Jacques Offenbach , Barrie Kosky directed the operetta Orphée aux enfers for the Salzburg Festival .

Awards

Award winners

Nominated

  • 2002: Nestroy : "Best Director" for Medea (Schauspielhaus Wien)
  • 2007: Faust Prize: "Best Direction for Music Theater" for Tristan and Isolde ( Aalto-Theater Essen)
  • 2013: Opernwelt Critics' Survey: "Director of the Year" (2012/13 season)

literature

  • Jürgen Bauer: No Escape. Aspects of the Jewish in the theater by Barrie Kosky . Edition Steinbauer, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902494-34-4 .
  • Barrie Kosky: On Ecstasy . Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne 2008, ISBN 978-0-522-85534-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sometimes Barrie Kosky is misspelled: Barry Kosky, Barrie Koski, Barrie Koskie.
  2. ↑ Kevin Clarke: Different from the others: Barrie Kosky in Bayreuth. In: queer.de , July 27, 2017, accessed on August 1, 2017.
  3. ↑ How anti-Semitic is Germany? ( Memento from October 27, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) In: 3sat , September 2018.
  4. ↑ Program English National Opera ( Memento from September 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Contract with Barrie Kosky extended to 2022 - Wowereit: Kosky is a great asset for the cultural metropolis of Berlin. In: Berlin.de, October 9, 2014.
  6. ^ New members of the Akademie der Künste Akademie der Künste, press release June 18, 2012.
  7. ↑ Christian Wildhagen: Doctor Freud and the war of faith . In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , April 22, 2015.
  8. ↑ Andreas Fasel: A director works on a particularly disgusting genius . April 8, 2006 ( welt.de [accessed December 27, 2019]).
  9. ↑ Bayreuth has Kosky staged the “Meistersinger” in 2017 , new music newspaper , July 25, 2014.
  10. ^ A b Julia Spinola: Wagner Festival: Everything kosher? In: Jüdische Allgemeine , July 17, 2017.
  11. ↑ a b Jan Brachmann: "Heil Stalin!" In: FAZ . January 11, 2019 (comment).;
  12. ↑ Salzburg Festival 2019: Orpheus in the Underworld , on arte.tv, accessed on October 27, 2019
  13. ↑ Wiebke Roloff: The power of the body . In: Opernwelt Jahrbuch 2016, p. 122.
  14. ↑ Margot Cape Spine: Les Trophées de la Comédie Musicale remettent leur deuxième Trophée d'Honneur au spectacle "Un Violon sur le Toit" . In: musicalavenue.fr, May 9, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Kosky, Barrie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-Australian opera and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH February 18, 1967
PLACE OF BIRTH Melbourne , Australia