Dominique Mentha
Dominique Mentha (born October 23, 1955 in Bern ) is a Swiss singer, theater director and director.
biography
Dominique Mentha was born in Bern as the son of a doctor and a painter. He studied singing with Ernst Haefliger and opera directing with August Everding at the University of Music in Munich . At the same time he took private acting lessons from Wolfgang Büttner .
Mentha began his artistic career as a singer. In 1982 he founded the Bern Opera Company . From 1983 Mentha worked under Arno Wüstenhöfer - from 1985 under Tobias Richter - at the Bremen Theater as a director. In 1987 he became senior director of the music theater at the Mainfranken Theater in Würzburg . In 1989 he moved to the Munster Municipal Theaters in the same position .
In 1992 Mentha became the artistic director of the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck as the successor to long-time director Helmut Wlasak (1930–2012). On the one hand, modern productions under Mentha triggered controversy and 1,500 subscription cancellations; on the other hand, it attracted the attention of international specialist critics with spectacular first performances. In 1999 Dominique Mentha succeeded Nikolaus Bachler as artistic director of the Vienna Volksoper . His renewal course led to quarrels after some successful and sometimes controversial performances. After Art State Secretary Franz Morak ( ÖVP ) announced in April 2002 that he did not want to extend the contract with Mentha, which ran until 2005, Mentha resigned prematurely in June 2003. He was succeeded by Rudolf Berger .
From the 2004/05 season onwards, Mentha took over the management of the Lucerne Theater , which his predecessor, the "praised, unloved" Barbara Mundel (* 1959 in Hildesheim), had left in June 2004. At the beginning of June 2007, the Lucerne Theater Foundation announced that Mentha's contract would be extended to 2014 because he had succeeded in “noticeably improving the numbers relevant for a theater with a high level of artistic quality”. With the 2016/17 season, Benedikt von Peter was appointed as the new director.
Dominique Mentha's wife is from Seattle . The couple lives in Biel , Graz and on an island off Seattle.
literature
- Nina Debrunner: Dominique Mentha . In: Andreas Kotte (Ed.): Theater Lexikon der Schweiz . Volume 2, Chronos, Zurich 2005, ISBN 3-0340-0715-9 , p. 1229 f.
- Dominique Mentha, Harald Müller (ed.): Dominique Mentha - A search for traces. Theater work in Lucerne, Vienna, Innsbruck. Theater der Zeit, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-95749-064-3 .
Web links
- Entry on Dominique Mentha in the Austria Forum (in the AEIOU Austria Lexicon )
- Dominique Mentha is the new director of the Lucerne Theater. on news.ch, September 30, 2002
- Peter Blaha : Lucerne is different. ( Memento from September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) pro: log, March 2005 (Opera magazine of the Vienna State Opera )
- Sometimes culture in Switzerland is just a traffic obstacle. In: NZZ Online . August 15, 2006
- Ernst Scherzer: Homeland discovered late. In: Wiener Zeitung . July 1, 2006 (accessed November 25, 2013)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Christoph Fellmann: The praised, unloved stranger , the culture magazine (monthly magazine for Lucerne and Central Switzerland), May 2004.
- ↑ Dominique Mentha is head of Lucerne Theater until 2014 , news.ch, June 5, 2007.
- ↑ Ursula Strohal: Dominique Mentha: "Be violent to make a difference" . In: tt.com , November 9, 2016, accessed March 8, 2020.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Mentha, Dominique |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Swiss singer, theater director and artistic director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 23, 1955 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Bern |