Stefan Herheim

Opera stage director Stefan Herheim has a profound musical background from his hometown Oslo, where he next to studying cello toured throughout Norway with his own Puppet Opera Company and also worked as a production assistant at the Norwegian National Opera, where his father played in the orchestra. In 1994 went on to study stage direction with Götz Friedrich at the Hamburg University of Music and Theatre, where his master degree included a staging of The Magic Flute.

Today Herheim is internationally known for spectacular, thought-provoking and sometimes controversial productions, such as La forza del destino and Lohengrin (Berlin State Opera), I Puritani and Don Giovanni (Essen), Cosi fan tutte (Stockholm), Das Rheingold (Riga), Parsifal (Bayreuth Festival), Rusalka (Bruxelles), Lulu (Royal Danish Opera), Eugen Onegin (Amsterdam), Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Salome and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Salzburg Festival), Der Rosenkavalier (Stuttgart), Carmen and Manon Lescaut (Graz), Giulio Cesare, Tannhäuser and La bohème (Oslo), Xerxes (Komische Oper Berlin) and Les Vêpres siciliennes (London, ROH). Herheim's many awards include the 2003 Götz Friedrich Foundation Prize and he was named stage director of the year by Opernwelt in 2006, 2008 and 2010. He lives in Berlin and teach as a visiting lecturer at several European Academies of Music and Performing Arts.