Tobias Kratzer
Director
© Priska Ketterer
Tobias Kratzer made his debut at Oper Frankfurt in 2018 with his unforgettable production of Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, which was followed by stunning stagings of Verdi’s La forza del destino, this production of Nielsen's Maskerade (get the DVD! Naxos) and Rudi Stephan’s Die ersten Menschen / The First People (»Rediscovery of the Year« (Opernwelt), the world premiere of which took place in Frankfurt in 1920. This season saw the start of his new Ring at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and he continues his fascination with Strauss at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, where he directed Zemlinsky's The Dwarf, with Die Frau ohne Schatten, following on from Arabella and Intermezzo. Recent productions have taken him to places including the Opéra national de Paris (Gounod’s Faust), Covent Garden in London (Beethoven's Fidelio), the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels (Mozart’s Lucio Silla and Puccini’s Il trittico), the Nationale Opera Amsterdam (Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann), the Aix-en-Provence Festival (Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon) and Musiktheater an der Wien (La gazza ladra and Schwanda the Bagpiper). He recently directed Henzi's Raft of Medusa at the Komische Oper in Tempelhof airport, hangar 1, the world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas's Liebesgesang in Bern and Weinberg's The (female) Passenger (»Performance of the Year« - Opernwelt) at the Bayerische Staatsoper. He won the 2008 Ring Award and a DER FAUST Theatre Prize for Götterdämmerung at Baden's Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, where he also directed Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète, and directed Les Huguenots at the Staatstheater in Nürnberg and in Nice. He was voted »Opera Director of the Year« in 2018 by critics from Die Deutsche Bühne magazine and »Director of the Year« in 2020 for Tannhäuser in Bayreuth and Rossini's Guillaume Tell at the Opéra de Lyon by Opernwelt magazine. He studied history of art and philosophy in Munich and Bern and theatre and opera direction at Bavaria's August Everding Theatre Academy. He takes up the post of Intendant at the Hamburg State Opera in 2025.