Professor Harry Kupfer is one of Germany’s most distinguished directors. He is a member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, the Freien Academy of Arts in Hamburg and the Sächsische Academy of Arts in Dresden. He has direced more than 200 productions in cities including Dresden, Stuttgart, München, Hamburg, Vienna, Salzburg, London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Moscow and San Francisco. His most recent production was Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Zurich Opera. Productions in recent seasons have included Palestrina and La Damnation de Faust at Oper Frankfurt, The Tales of Hoffmann in Warsaw, Ariadne auf Naxos at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Die lustige Witwe/The Merry Widow in Hamburg and a musical, Elisabeth. Productions at Oper Frankfurt in the past were Lulu in 1979 and Madame Butterfly in 1980. His productions of Der fliegende Holländer/The Flying Dutchman (1978) and Der Ring des Nibelungen (1988) at the Bayreuth Festival were talked of all over the world. His last production as Chief Director at the Komische Oper in Berlin, The Turn of the Screw, received the 2002 Bavarian Theatre Prize for Opera. He has also been awarded the Große Bundesverdienstkreuz with the Stern (star) of the Bundesrepublik Deutschland.