Nikolaus Lehnhoff

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Nikolaus Lehnhoff (20 May 1939 in Hanover – 29 August 2015 in Berlin) was a German opera director.

Hanover Place in Lower Saxony, Germany

Hanover or Hannover is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,061 (2017) inhabitants make it the thirteenth-largest city of Germany, as well as the third-largest city of Northern Germany after Hamburg and Bremen. The city lies at the confluence of the River Leine and its tributary Ihme, in the south of the North German Plain, and is the largest city of the Hannover–Braunschweig–Göttingen–Wolfsburg Metropolitan Region. It is the fifth-largest city in the Low German dialect area after Hamburg, Dortmund, Essen, and Bremen.

Berlin Capital of Germany

Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,748,148 (2018) inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London. The city is one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and contiguous with its capital, Potsdam. The two cities are at the center of the Berlin-Brandenburg capital region, which is, with about six million inhabitants and an area of more than 30,000 km², Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions.

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Life and career

Born in Hanover to Erika (née Fiediger) and Friedrich Lehnhoff, Lehnhoff studied at the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. [1] Lenhoff began his career working as a stage director at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and as an assistant to Wieland Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival in the 1960s. He then became a stage director for the Metropolitan Opera, beginning with the 1967 revival of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro . He served as stage director for several more Met productions through 1970, including Ariadne auf Naxos , La bohème , The Flying Dutchman , and Simon Boccanegra . [2]

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich university in Munich, Germany

Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich is a public research university located in Munich, Germany.

University of Vienna public university located in Vienna, Austria

The University of Vienna is a public university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich history, the University of Vienna has developed into one of the largest universities in Europe, and also one of the most renowned, especially in the Humanities. It is associated with 20 Nobel prize winners and has been the academic home to a large number of scholars of historical as well as of academic importance.

Deutsche Oper Berlin opera house

The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is the country's second largest opera house and also home to the Berlin State Ballet.

In 1972 Lenhoff directed his first opera; a production of Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Paris Opera with Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry. He directed that same work for his directorial debut at the San Francisco Opera (SFO) with Leonie Rysanek as the Empress in 1976. He returned many times to direct for the SFO over the next three decades, including Salome (1982 & 1987), The Ring Cycle (1983-1985, 1990, & 1999), Die Walküre (1995), Parsifal (1999-2000), and The Flying Dutchman (2004-2005). [3] His production of The Ring Cycle for the SFO was adopted by the National Theatre Munich in 1987. [1]

<i>Die Frau ohne Schatten</i> opera by Richard Strauss

Die Frau ohne Schatten, Op. 65, is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with a libretto by his long-time collaborator, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was written between 1911 and either 1915 or 1917. When it premiered in Vienna on 10 October 1919, critics and audiences were unenthusiastic. Many cited problems with Hofmannsthal's complicated and heavily symbolic libretto. However, it is now a standard part of the operatic repertoire.

Paris Opera the primary opera company of France

The Paris Opera is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra, and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the Académie Royale de Musique, but continued to be known more simply as the Opéra. Classical ballet as it is known today arose within the Paris Opera as the Paris Opera Ballet and has remained an integral and important part of the company. Currently called the Opéra National de Paris, it mainly produces operas at its modern 2700-seat theatre Opéra Bastille which opened in 1989, and ballets and some classical operas at the older 1970-seat Palais Garnier which opened in 1875. Small scale and contemporary works are also staged in the 500-seat Amphitheatre under the Opéra Bastille.

Christa Ludwig German mezzo-soprano

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Lenhoff directed several works for the Glyndebourne Festival Opera, including Tristan und Isolde (2003); the company's first staging of an opera by Richard Wagner. Other operas he directed for Glyndebourne included Káťa Kabanová (1988), Jenůfa (1989), and The Makropulos Affair (1995). [2]

Glyndebourne Festival Opera English opera festival

Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an annual opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England.

<i>Tristan und Isolde</i> opera by Richard Wagner

Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90, is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "eine Handlung", which was the equivalent of the term used by the Spanish playwright Calderón for his dramas.

Richard Wagner German composer

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

In 1988 Lehnhoff directed Berlioz's La damnation de Faust at the Hamburg State Opera in a production that utilized pop video art by Suzan Pitt. [4] In 1989 he made his debut at the Santa Fe Opera directing The Flying Dutchman with James Morris in the title role. [5] That same year he made his directorial debut at the Metropolitan Opera with Eva Marton as his Salome. [2] He directed that same work three more times at the Met; in 1990, 1996, and 2004. In 2000-2001 he directed Parsifal and The Flying Dutchman at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. [6] In 2006 he directed the European debut of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking at the Semperoper in Dresden. [7] In 2013 he directed The Flying Dutchman at the Los Angeles Opera. [2] The last production he directed was Puccini's Turandot at La Scala in May 2015. [8]

<i>La damnation de Faust</i> opera

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Hamburg State Opera opera building in Hamburg, Germany

The Hamburg State Opera is a German opera company based in Hamburg. Its theatre is located near the square of Gänsemarkt. Since 2015, the current Intendant of the company is Georges Delnon, and the current Generalmusikdirektor of the company is Kent Nagano.

Suzan Pitt is an American film animator and painter, whose surreal, psychological animated films and paintings have been acclaimed and exhibited worldwide. She teaches with the Experimental Animation program at California Institute of the Arts.

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References

  1. 1 2 Barry Millington (2 September 2015). "Nikolaus Lehnhoff obituary: Opera director who was best known in Britain for his association with Glyndebourne". The Guardian .
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Obituaries: Nikolaus Lehnhoff". Opera News . 80 (5). November 2015.
  3. ↑ "Nikolaus Lenhoff". San Francisco Opera Performance Archives.
  4. ↑ Julia Spinola (28 August 2015). "Zum Tod des Regisseurs Nikolaus Lehnhoff: Der Seelenerkunder". Neue Zürcher Zeitung .
  5. ↑ "Flying Dutchman, The". Santa Fe Opera Performance Archives. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
  6. ↑ "2000/01 Season". Lyric Opera of Chicago Performance Archives. Retrieved December 4, 2015.
  7. ↑ Sam Roberts (September 1, 2015). "Nikolaus Lehnhoff, German Opera Director, Dies at 76". The New York Times .
  8. ↑ "Nikolaus Lehnhoff, stage director - obituary". The Daily Telegraph . September 2, 2015.
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