Nikolaus Bachler, (until 2008 also Klaus Bachler) (born 29 March 1951 in Fohnsdorf, Styria) is an Austrian theater and opera director and actor.
Nikolaus Bachler, (until 2008 also Klaus Bachler) (born 29 March 1951 in Fohnsdorf, Styria) is an Austrian theater and opera director and actor.
Klaus Bachler first studied acting at the Wiener Max-Reinhardt-Seminar. After graduation he went to the Salzburger Landestheater and was engaged on various German stages. From 1987 to 1990 he was artistic director of the Berlin Schiller Theater and then went to Paris for two years.
In 1992, he returned to Austria and was initially appointed director of the Vienna Festival, (where he initiated the cult piece Alma - Show Biz to the end, among others), then in 1996 he became director of the Vienna Volksoper. In 1999 he took over the Viennese Burgtheater from Claus Peymann.
At the beginning of the 2008/2009 season Klaus Bachler took over the directorship of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. [1] Since then, he went back to using his birth name, Nikolaus Bachler. [2]
Bachler's direction was a paradigm shift for the Burgtheater, compared to the direction of his predecessor. Bachler was a cultural manager-director, moving the theater to the forefront, not like his predecessor Peymann, a warlike director. He engaged directors such as Luc Bondy, Andrea Breth, and Peter Zadek.
He understood theater to have a certain social responsibility. In 2007 he launched the initiative "Free theater!", for which school classes were offered the opportunity to attend select performances free of charge.
The program included modern as well as classical pieces in different stagings. He established the venues "Vestibule" and "Casino" as spaces for experimental theater and new approaches.
Klaus Bachler placed a thematic emphasis on the Shakespeare cycle, which ran until 2008, in which modern interpretations of classical Shakespeare plays, readings, and lectures examined the work and time of Shakespeare and its effects on the contemporary age.
Other highlights were the MTV Unplugged concerts by Die Toten Hosen, released on the album Nur zu Besuch in 2005. [3]
In 2008 Nikolaus Bachler took over the direction of the Bayerische Staatsoper. He continued the artistic vision of his Burgtheater years, hiring opera directors such as Hans Neuenfels, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Martin Kušej, Krzysztof Warlikowski, and Calixto Bieito, as well as drama directors like David Bösch, Andreas Kriegenburg, and Antú Romero Nunes, who presented their first opera productions there. He led new interpretations of Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen in 2012 and the world premieres of Peter Eötvös' Die Tragödie des Teufels (2010), Miroslav Srnka's Make No Noise (2011), Jörg Widmann's Babylon (2012), and Srnka's South Pole. [4]
At the beginning of the 2013/14 season, Nikolaus Bachler appointed the conductor Kirill Petrenko as General Music Director.
Bachler is a member of the Broadcasting Council of the Bavarian Radio, as a representative of the directorship of Bavarian state theaters. [5] The Vienna Burgtheater awarded him an honorary membership in 2009. [6]
The Bavarian State Opera is an opera company based in Munich, Germany. Its orchestra is the Bavarian State Orchestra. The company's home base is the National Theatre Munich.
The Burgtheater, originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the national theater of Austria in Vienna. It is the most important German-language theater and one of the most important theatres in the world. The Burgtheater was opened in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the Viennese population; its theater company has created a traditional style and speech typical of Burgtheater performances.
Harry Alfred Robert Kupfer was a German opera director and academic. A long-time director at the Komische Oper Berlin, he worked at major opera houses and at festivals internationally. Trained by Walter Felsenstein, he worked in the tradition of realistic directing. At the Bayreuth Festival, he staged Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer in 1978 and Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1988. At the Salzburg Festival, he directed the premiere of Penderecki's Die schwarze Maske in 1986 and Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss in 2014.
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Konstanze Vernon was a German ballet dancer, academic teacher and director of a ballet academy and a ballet company. She was from 1963 to 1981 prima ballerina of the ballet at the Bayerische Staatsoper. She taught at the Hochschule für Musik München and founded the ballet academy Heinz-Bosl-Stiftung in memory of her partner on stage Heinz Bosl. After retiring from the stage, she was founding director of the now independent ballet company Bayerisches Staatsballett.
Gert Voss was a German actor. He was known for his roles in Labyrinth of Lies (2014), Sometime in August (2009) and Ritter, Dene, Voss (1987). He was member of the ensemble of the Burgtheater, and a Kammerschauspieler.
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Ignaz Kirchner was a German actor who made a career on German-speaking stages, especially at Vienna's Burgtheater where he played for 30 years. A character actor, he worked with leading stage directors. He often played opposite Gert Voss, both in classical drama such as Shakespeare's Antonio, with Voss as Shylock, and as Jago, with Voss as Othello, and especially in black comedies, such as Goldberg in Tabori's Die Goldberg-Variationen, and in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys, Beckett's Endspiel and Genet's Die Zofen. Kirchner and Voss were named Schauspielerpaar des Jahres twice, in 1992 and 1998.
Alfred Kirchner is a German actor, theatre director and theatre manager who is based in Berlin. He worked at theatres such as Theater Bremen, Schauspielhaus Bochum, the Burgtheater in Vienna and the Staatliche Schauspielbühnen Berlin, before turning to freelance work. He has staged productions in Europe and North America, including several world premieres of both drama and opera. He directed the premiere of Martin Walser's Ein Kinderspiel in Stuttgart in 1971, the U.S. premiere of Henze's We Come to the River at the Santa Fe Opera in 1984, and the premiere of Hans Zender's Stephen Climax at the Oper Frankfurt in 1986. In 1994, he staged Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival.
Kieth Engen was an American operatic bass who was a member of Munich's Bavarian State Opera for decades. Although his career was based in Munich, he appeared internationally as a guest singer at major opera houses and festivals and performed and recorded many of Bach's Passion oratorios and cantatas, primarily with the conductor Karl Richter. He was born Keith Sheldon Engen in Frazee, Minnesota, and died in Murnau am Staffelsee, Germany at the age of 79. He was given the title of Kammersänger in 1962 and was a recipient of the Bavarian Order of Merit. In the mid-1950s he also had a brief parallel career as a pop singer under the pseudonym Stan Oliver.
Hellmuth Matiasek, also Helmuth Matiasek, is an Austrian theatre and film director.
Mauro Peter is a Swiss operatic lyric tenor.
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Andreas K. W. Meyer is a German dramaturge and journalist.
Katja Czellnik is a German music theatre director and lecturer at the Universität der Künste Berlin.
