Harald B. Thor

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Harald B. Thor (born 1956 in Salzburg ) is an Austrian stage and costume designer , among others, with directors Andreas Kriegenburg , Stefan Huber , Georg Schmiedleitner and Andreas Baesler cooperates.

life and work

Harald B. Thor studied stage and costume design at the Mozarteum University of Music and Performing Arts in Salzburg, where he graduated with honors in 1982. His first engagement led him to work as an outfitter and graphic artist at the Landestheater Coburg . In 1984 he was engaged at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he took over the equipment management from 1986. The director and general manager August Everding engaged Thor in 1998 for the world premiere of Rolf Hochhuth 's Effis Nacht at the Munich Prinzregententheater and in 1999 made him head of equipment and a lecturer in stage design at the Bavarian Theater Academy . At the same time, he designed a number of sets for stages in Munich, Berlin, Mannheim, Vienna, Basel, Zurich, Moscow and Seoul.

Cooperation with Andreas Kriegenburg

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Director: Andreas Kriegenburg , stage: Harald B. Thor, costumes: Andrea Schraad

Harald B. Thor has been working as a freelance outfitter since 2001 and works - both in acting and in opera - mainly for the director Andreas Kriegenburg . There were joint productions at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, the Schauspielhaus Zurich , the Schauspiel Hannover , the Akademietheater Munich and the Schauspiel Frankfurt , as well as Kriegenburg's first opera works at the Magdeburg Opera House , the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.

The collaboration between the Kriegenburg / Thor / Schraad team at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, which began in 2008 with Wozzeck by Georg Büchner and Alban Berg , has been particularly successful so far , a production that has been praised as “fascinating”, “breathtaking” and “a true masterpiece” has been. Wozzeck from Munich was a co-production with the New National Theater Tokyo .

2012 followed in Munich Der Ring des Nibelungen by Richard Wagner . Kriegenburg and Thor settled Die Walküre in a morgue where the dead are washed by women, and located Götterdämmerung between an earthquake in Tokyo and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima , an end of postmodernism.

In 2014 Thor created the set for Kriegenburg's production of the soldiers by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz and Bernd Alois Zimmermann in Munich. “Thor built the obvious setting for this passion: a huge, mobile cross, almost an altar composed of cube-shaped cages. In the stables, behind chain-link fences, people rage as if fate held them like unpredictable animals: the soldiers like the wounded, the fallen. There is no escape. Not even for the audience. ”In 2014, this production was named“ Performance of the Year ”by the Opernwelt's critics' survey .

In 2015 a highly idiosyncratic stage design for Maxim Gorkis Wassa Schelesnowa at the Vienna Burgtheater followed . The ORF reported: "The uncertainty and upheavals in society, on the other hand, symbolize Harald B. Thor's multifunctional stage in the clearest possible way - an impressive plank structure that rocks and floats, tilts and lifts: Whoever wants to survive here must have a good grip."

In 2017 he worked with Kriegenburg at the Salzburg Festival ( Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk ).

Cooperation with Stefan Huber

In musicals Thor has worked for many years with Stefan Huber together, the State Theater on Gärtnerplatz in Munich, in the United Stages Vienna and for open-air productions in Switzerland. The director and sets produced Cole Porter's Anything Goes at the Mannheim National Theater in 2006 and Cole Porter's Silk Stockings at the Nuremberg State Theater in 2008 . The most recent work together is Funny Girl by Jule Styne and Isobel Lennart . The production premiered at the Dortmund Theater in 2012 , was shown at the Nuremberg State Theater in 2013, at the Chemnitz Opera House in 2014 and at the Graz Opera in 2016.

Further engagements

From 2002 to 2004 Harald B. Thor took over the artistic direction of the Richard Strauss Days in Garmisch-Partenkirchen .

Thor also has a long-term collaboration with the opera director Andreas Baesler . Together they realized the face in the mirror by Jörg Widmann in 2005 and Death in Venice by Benjamin Britten in 2006 , both at Theaters Krefeld and Mönchengladbach , in 2010 Weber'schen Freischütz at the Braunschweig State Theater and Donizetti's Emilia di Liverpool at the Nuremberg State Theater , 2011 Verdi's Nabucco at Aalto-Theater in Essen, 2012 Mozart's Così fan tutte at the Landestheater Linz and in 2014 the Arabella von Hofmannsthal / Strauss in Nuremberg. The set designer also came to Cuba twice with this director, where they realized the Cuban premiere of Mozart's Magic Flute at the Gran Teatro Havana in 2009 and Richard Wagner's first Flying Dutchman in 2013 . For the Dutch stage set, Thor worked with the well-known Cuban sculptor Kcho.

The set designer has also worked with opera director Helen Malkowsky for many years. In addition to several joint productions at the State Theater in Nuremberg , including Wagner's Fliegender Holländer , Thor designed the sets for Luisa Miller , Capriccio , Carmen , Salome and Don Giovanni at the Bielefeld Theater . In 2012 Thor designed the sets for Malkowsky's Parsifal production at the Staatstheater Kassel , and in 2015 for Die tote Stadt by Erich Wolfgang Korngold at the Chemnitz Theater .

Together with spoken theater director Georg Schmiedleitner , with whom he had already realized Verdi's Macbeth at the State Theater in Nuremberg in 2011 , Thor is responsible for a Schiller cycle at the Leipzig Theater , which began in 2014 with Kabale und Liebe and continued in 2015 with Maria Stuart .

In 2016 he designed the set for David Bösch's production of The Three Sisters at the Burgtheater in Vienna .

Harald Thor has also worked as a Scenic Art Supervisor for Walt Disney Productions , as well as an architect of concert halls and exhibitions. For example, he was involved in the conception of the new concert hall in Munich's Prinzregententheater and took on commissions from the Geneva Auto Salon and the Austrian Theater Museum in Vienna.

Quote

“Andreas Kriegenburg and his set designer Harald B. Thor, who always had a sense for clever, symbolic signs, hang the floor on which the title character and her large family moves on steel cables, so that the scene always floats and sways and the There is a risk of throwing people into nothing: a convincing picture of the instability of the economic situation in which the bankrupt company Schelesnow is operating. - The mother, in whose hard fists all strings come together, has noticed that in stormy times only unsentimental Darwinism ensures survival, and so she ruthlessly pushes all relatives off the board who could bring their clumsiness to a decline. "

- Michel Schaer : The voice of criticism for Bümpliz and the world about Wassa Schelesnowa at the Vienna Burgtheater, January 28, 2016

Productions with Andreas Kriegenburg (selection)

play

Opera

Awards

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Seen and Heard International: Munich's Ever Fabulous Wozzeck , July 26, 2012
  2. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel : The warmth dies first. Andreas Kriegenburg and Kent Nagano show a breathtaking "Wozzeck" in Munich. , November 12, 2008
  3. ↑ Bachtrack: Andreas Kriegenburg's Wozzeck: A true masterpiece , June 9, 2012
  4. ^ Kurier : Opera: Packing "Walküre" in Munich , March 12, 2012
  5. ↑ Die Presse : "Ring des Nibelungen": Gibichungen on the rocking horse , July 1, 2012
  6. ↑ Jürgen Kanold: Apocalypse in the Cage , Südwest Presse , May 27, 2014
  7. ↑ ORF : Burgtheater: Grandioser Gorki on unsafe terrain , October 23, 2015
  8. ^ Nestroy Prize 2016: The Nominations . Press release of September 27, 2016, accessed on September 27, 2016.
  9. ↑ orf.at - Frank Castorf receives Nestroy for life's work . Article dated September 27, 2016, accessed September 27, 2016.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thor, Harald B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thor, Harald
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian stage and costume designer
DATE OF BIRTH 1956
PLACE OF BIRTH Salzburg