Peter Konwitschny

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Peter Konwitschny (born January 21, 1945 in Frankfurt am Main ) is a German ( opera ) director . For his polarizing productions at the major opera houses in German-speaking countries, he has been voted director of the year several times by the specialist press. He is a member of the Academy of the Arts in Berlin , the Free Academy of the Arts in Leipzig , the Free Academy of the Arts Hamburg and the Saxon Academy of the Arts and since 2002 honorary professor at the Hanns Eisler University of Music in Berlin.

Life

Peter Konwitschny - son of conductor Franz Konwitschny - grew after the end of World War II in Leipzig , where his father since 1949 Gewandhaus - Conductor was. In 1963 Konwitschny decided to study physics, which he broke off after a short time to study directing at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin (1965–1970). This was preceded by an internship at the German State Opera Berlin.

In the 1970s Konwitschny worked as an assistant director at the Berliner Ensemble , primarily under Ruth Berghaus , and then from 1980 as a freelance director. He mainly staged operas in Greifswald , Rostock and Altenburg , but also plays by Bertolt Brecht , Gerhart Hauptmann and Heiner Müller . From 1986 to 1990 he was in-house director at the Landestheater Halle , where he staged Handel's Rinaldo in 1987 and Verdi's Rigoletto in 1988 and Bizet's Carmen , but also traveled to Germany. B. to Kassel, where in 1987 he brought Duke Bluebeard's castle by Béla Bartók to the stage. His productions of Handel were critically acclaimed.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Konwitschny directed Puccini and Rossini in Graz , Leipzig and Basel , and from the mid-1990s on with a preference for Wagner : 1995 the Parsifal at the Bavarian State Opera , 1997 Tannhäuser at the Dresden Semperoper , 1998 Lohengrin in Hamburg , Tristan and Isolde again in Munich (until 2015) and above all Götterdämmerung at the Stuttgart State Opera in 2000, which was named “Performance of the Year” in the critics' survey by Opernwelt magazine .

His interpretations differ dramatically from the original, which advocates of faithfulness to the work reproach him . The Dresden Csárdásfürstin , an operetta by Emmerich Kálmán , relocated by Konwitschny to a World War I trench , became a scandal when the director of the Semperoper at the time, Christoph Albrecht , canceled two scenes from the production after the premiere. Konwitschny obtained an injunction against the amended version, followed by a two-tier court case. At the beginning of 2010 at the Graz Opera, the re-performance (Konwitschny's tenth directorial work in this house) "hardly aroused the minds".

In the following years, Konwitschny implemented his concept of a modern directorial theater, especially in Hamburg, together with the local music director Ingo Metzmacher : Lulu by Alban Berg , Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg by Richard Wagner and Moses und Aron by Arnold Schönberg were great audiences. “Konwitschny is loved and hostile on the opera stage like no other director.” At the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow , he staged Wagner's Flying Dutchman in 2004 (performances in Munich from 2006 and Graz 2007), in 2005 Strauss' Elektra in Copenhagen, in 2006 Verdi's Don Carlos in Vienna (new production: April 24, 2012) and Strauss' Salome in Amsterdam in 2009 . From August 2008 to December 31, 2011, Peter Konwitschny was chief director of the Leipzig Opera .

In 2009 Konwitschny and his King Lear staged at the Schauspielhaus Graz for the first time since the fall of the Berlin Wall. In 2011 he staged Giuseppe Verdi's La traviata for the first time . This work at the Graz Opera was followed in November 2011 by Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades . The directorial work on Leoš Janáček's From a House of the Dead was shown at the Vienna State Opera (Conductor: Franz Welser-Möst ) from December 11, 2011. On December 15, 2012, his production of Faust premiered at the Schauspielhaus Graz.

Konwitschny staged Verdi's opera Attila for the Theater an der Wien under the musical direction of Riccardo Frizza (premiere: July 7, 2013). His production of Jenůfa premiered on March 29, 2014 at Oper Graz (premiered on September 20 at Theater Augsburg ). In 2015 he staged the Salzburg Festival in the Felsenreitschule Eroberung von Mexico by Wolfgang Rihm and in 2017 at the Theater Bonn the opera Penthesilea by Othmar Schoeck .

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ernst Naredi-Rainer: "The most important thing in life is love" . In: kleinezeitung.at , January 21, 2010. ( Memento from September 30, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Ernst Naredi-Rainer: "The Csárdásfürstin": The dance of death of an era . In: kleinezeitung.at , January 24, 2010. ( Memento from February 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Angelika Rausch / ddp ( Memento from February 15, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Peter Konwitschny on his "Don Carlos" . In: kurier.at , April 22, 2012, accessed on June 24, 2013.
  5. ↑ Ernst Naredi-Rainer: "Pique Dame": The victims of the great greed for money . In: kleinezeitung.at , November 7, 2011. ( Memento from November 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ Universal Edition AG: Janácek's From a House of the Dead in Vienna . In: universaledition.com , accessed June 24, 2013.
  7. ↑ Konwitschny: “Faust” has forgotten how to love . In: steiermark.orf.at , December 15, 2012, accessed on June 24, 2013.
  8. ^ United stages Vienna : Attila . In: theater-wien.at , accessed on June 24, 2013.
  9. ↑ Office of the Federal President
  10. ↑ Director of the Year 2018
personal data
SURNAME Konwitschny, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German opera director
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main