Olaf A. Schmitt

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Olaf A. Schmitt (* 1977 in Schweinfurt ) is a German dramaturge . He has been the artistic director of the Kasseler Musiktage since 2016 and since 2019 as a freelance dramaturge and artistic advisor to the Bregenz Festival , where he worked as chief dramaturge from 2014 to 2019.

life and work

Schmitt studied theater , media and musicology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. During his studies he already gained professional experience at the Stuttgart State Opera , at the Salzburg Festival and at the music theater in the Gelsenkirchen district. He received scholarships from the Akademie Musiktheater heute of the Deutsche Bank Foundation and from the Richard Wagner Scholarship Foundation . In 2003 he worked on the Heiner Müller Handbook , edited by Hans-Thies Lehmann and Patrick Primavesi , his contributions are Expenditure, Sacrifice, Death; Heiner Goebbels; Compositions; Bibliography In 2004 he was co-editor of the festschrift for the 60th birthday of his teacher Hans-Thies Lehmann.

His first permanent engagement took him from 2005 to 2008 as a music dramaturge at the Heidelberg Theater , where he was involved in an interactive project called Das neue Wunderhorn , which integrated the city, amateur musicians and schools and was then published on a DVD and in a book. From 2008 he worked for five years as an opera dramaturge at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he worked with directors Martin Kušej , Barrie Kosky and Andreas Kriegenburg as well as with the composers Peter Eötvös and Miroslav Srnka . In 2012 he was one of the production dramaturges for Kriegenburg's interpretation of the Ring des Nibelungen in the run-up to the Wagner year 2013. In the second half of 2012, he supervised the new production of Nozze di Figaro by Benjamin Schad at the Royal Opera Covent Garden at the Cologne Opera In 2014 he was a guest dramaturge in London for Idomeneo directed by Martin Kušej.

In the second half of 2014 he took up his position as chief dramaturge of the Bregenz Festival in the new directorship of Elisabeth Sobotka and was involved in a leading position at the successful festivals in 2015 and 2016. The play at the lake of these two festival years, Puccini's Turandot , achieved broad approval from the audience, two exemplary productions in the Festspielhaus attracted the attention and approval of the press and the opera world: 2015 Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann (staged by Stefan Herheim ) with Daniel Johansson in the title role and in 2016 the rediscovery of Franco Faccios Amleto (staged by Olivier Tambosi ) with Pavel Černoch in the title role.

In addition to his Bregenz function, Schmitt has been the successor to Dieter Rexroth as Artistic Director of the Kasseler Musiktage since 2016 . These were founded in 1933 by the Bärenreiter-Verlag and the Arbeitskreis für Hausmusik (today the International Working Group for Music), take place at the end of October / beginning of November and have been organized as a non-profit association since 1982. Schmitt would like to "present the many facets of music, also beyond genre categories, and make them tangible". In particular, he wants to enable the audience to meet the participating artists and provide surprises: "I want to amaze the ears."

In its first season in Kassel, the new director of the festival presented the rarely performed baroque opera Los Elementos by the Spanish composer Antonio de Literes (1673–1747) in a co-production with the Staatstheater Kassel . It was conducted by Jörg Halubek , it staged, choreographed and furnished with Zenta Haerter . Furthermore, the Finnish accordion virtuoso Kimmo Pohjonen could be seen and heard in various formats - concert and film. The Prague ensemble Collegium 1704 and Collegium Vocale 1704 performed the opening concert with Monteverdi's Vespers . The motto of the 2017 festival was "What do you dare?" and presented the cellist Matthew Barley, the mandolinist Avi Avital and the hang player Manu Delago in various concerts, including a surprise concert, the program of which the three musicians worked on exclusively over several days in Kassel. In 2018, the Kassel Music Days were dedicated to the motto "When do you sing?" and let the audience include the countertenor Valer Sabadus, the soprano Herdís Jónasdóttir with the orchestra in the stairwell, the art piper Nikolaus Habjan, the mezzo-soprano Okka von der Damerau with the pianist Karola Theill, Rossini's Stabat Mater with the Kassel State Orchestra, and Generaliamo Kassel under the Kassel State Orchestra Angelico and the Syrian singer Rasha Rizk with the Damascus String Quintet. Every year since 2016, the Apollon Musagète Quartet has presented a new quartet by Antonín Dvorák.

He is a lecturer at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, and also teaches at the Bavarian Theater Academy in Munich and the Universities of Frankfurt am Main and Zurich. He gave lectures in Bayreuth and the United States, among others.

Publications (selection)

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ klassik.com: Kasseler Musiktage - Olaf Schmitt , accessed on August 22, 2016.
  2. ↑ Heidelberg Theater and Orchestra : Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed August 22, 2016.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.heidelberger-philharmoniker.de
  3. ↑ HNA : Festival: Olaf A. Schmitt takes over the management of the Kasseler Musiktage in 2016 , March 4, 2014, accessed on August 22, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Schmitt, Olaf A.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dramaturge and festival director
DATE OF BIRTH 1977
PLACE OF BIRTH Schweinfurt