"German director Claus Guth, born in 1964 in Frankfurt, studied philosophy, German and theater studies at the University of Munich ..."

"German director Claus Guth, born in 1964 in Frankfurt, studied philosophy, German and theater studies at the University of Munich as well as theater and opera directing at the Munich Conservatory. He found major inspiration in his work with Axel Manthey in Hamburg and Stuttgart. Early on in his career, world premieres were an important part of his work: at the Munich Biennale, he directed Giorgio Battistelli’s Keplers Traum, Chaya Czernowin’s Pnima…ins Innere and Johannes Maria Staud’s Berenice; at the Salzburg Festival, he directed Luciano Berio’s Cronaca del luogo and Chaya Czernowin’s Adama combined with Mozart’s fragment Zaide; at the Semper Opera in Dresden, he oversaw the production of Peter Ruzicka’s Celan, in Basel Klaus Huber’s Schwarzerde and Helmut Oehring’s Unsichtbar Land, and in Aachen Oehring’s BlauWaldDorf. In the traditional repertoire, his work spans baroque opera from Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride, which he directed in Salzburg in 2000 to great acclaim, to Mozart, Rossini, Lortzing, Verdi and Wagner to classic works of modernism, such as Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. Claus Guth has been an especially frequent guest at the opera houses of Basel and Zurich – frequently in collaboration with the stage and costume designer Christian Schmidt; in Zurich, his productions have included, among others, Fierrabras, Radamisto, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Ariadne auf Naxos, and most recently Tristan and Isolde. In 2003, he made his debut at the Bayreuth Festival with Der fliegende Holländer, in 2005 he directed Mozart’s Lucio Silla at the Vienna Festival – his first collaboration with the conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, which was continued in 2006 with the Salzburg Festival’s Le nozze di Figaro. After Don Giovanni (2008), Guth’s Mozart/Da Ponte cycle will be concluded in the summer of 2009 with Così fan tutte. During the recent seasons, Claus Guth also directed in Dresden (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg), at Munich’s Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz (In mir klingt ein Lied, a “topography of operetta”), at the Bavarian State Opera (Luisa Miller), in Frankfurt (Un ballo in maschera, Il trittico) as well as in Hamburg, where he followed his Simon Boccanegra in March of 2008 by opening the Ring des Nibelungen with Das Rheingold, succeeded by Die Walküre in October 2008. In the spring of 2009, he created a staged version of Handel’s Messiah at Vienna’ s Theater an der Wien. In the 2009–2010 season, Claus Guth will make his debut at the Vienna Staatsoper with Tannhäuser."

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