Willy Decker

Willy Decker (born September 8, 1950 in Pulheim ) is a German opera director .

Life

Decker studied after high school music (major violin) at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne, later at the local university theater studies, musicology, German and philosophy. He also studied singing with Josef Metternich at the Cologne Music Academy . In 1972, at the age of 22, he began his first permanent position as assistant director at the Städtische Bühnen in Essen, and later at the Cologne Opera as an assistant to Hans Neugebauer , Harry Kupfer , Jean-Pierre Ponnelle and Michael Hampe, among others . From 1986 he was senior director of the Cologne Opera .

Decker has been professor for musical theater directing at the Hanns Eisler University in Berlin since autumn 2005 . On October 17, 2007, Decker was appointed the new artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale , which he led from 2009 to 2011 as the successor to Jürgen Flimm. Since then he has directed at various theaters around the world, including Verdi's La traviata (2010/2011, Metropolitan Opera , New York City ), Alban Berg's Lulu (2011, Paris Opera ) and Mozart's Don Giovanni (2012, Sächsische Staatsoper Dresden ).

Decker, who grew up in Rhenish Catholicism , is now committed to Zen Buddhism .

Theater career

In 1978 Decker began directing his own and soon attracted attention beyond Cologne as a guest director at other theaters. Above all, the world premieres of Hans Werner Henze's Pollicino at the Cantiere Internazionale d'Arte in Montepulciano (1980) and Antonio Bibalo's opera Macbeth (Oslo, 1990) made him internationally known. His breakthrough came with the world premiere of Aribert Reimann's opera Das Schloss at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1991. Today he is one of the most famous and successful opera directors in the world.

He has directed at all major German opera houses, at the Paris Opera, the Vienna State Opera , the Hamburg State Opera, at the Semperoper in Dresden, at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino , at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, at the Drottningholm Festival in Stockholm, at the Lyric Opera in Chicago, at the opera houses in Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva and Madrid and at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. In 1999 Decker caused a sensation when he turned down an invitation to stage Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival "for artistic reasons" and was the first director in Bayreuth's history to turn down an invitation.

At the 2004 Salzburg Festival , Decker staged the dead city of Korngold with great success in collaboration with his long-time set designer Wolfgang Gussmann . In the 2005 festival season he achieved a sensational success with the staging of Verdi's La traviata (again with Gussmann and with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón in the leading roles), which achieved “cult status”.

In 2011 Decker staged Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner as the opening event of the Ruhrtriennale 2011 in the Jahrhunderthalle (Bochum) .

Awards

Decker has received many honors and awards for his work. Among other things, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2006. In France he was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bettina Jäger: Artistic director leaves Ruhrtriennale. Willy Decker says goodbye. Ruhr Nachrichten , October 6, 2011, accessed on May 20, 2013 . 
2. ↑ Willy Decker at Operabase (Staging) ( Memento from June 30, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ).
3. ↑ Tristan in the Jahrhunderthalle interview with the Rheinische Post , August 9, 2011