Tobias Kratzer
Director
© Enrico Nawrath
Tobias Kratzer is back at Oper Frankfurt, where he made his debut in 2018 with an unforgettable production of Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, which was followed by stunning stagings of Verdi’s La forza del destino and Nielsen's Maskerade (due for release by Naxos on DVD), for Rudi Stephan’s Die ersten Menschen / The First People, the world premiere of which took place in Frankfurt in 1920. During recent seasons he has worked at 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), Aix-en-Provence Festival (Rossini’s Moïse et Pharaon) and Theater an der Wien (La gazza ladra). Work in Germany has taken him to theatres including the Komische Oper and Deutsche Oper in Berlin (Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg / The Dwarf and Arabella) and Weimar. 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. Future plans include Henze’s Das Floß der Medusa / The Raft of Medusa at the Komische Oper, in their interim venue in hangar 1 at Tempelhof airport, Intermezzo and Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’ Liebesgesang in Bern and Weinberg's Die Passagierin (The (female) Passenger) at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich.