Oper Zürich is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 company based in Zurich

Zürich

Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. The company gives performances in the Opernhaus Zürich which has been the company’s home for fifty years.

History

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler

Wilhelm Furtwängler was a German conductor and composer. He is widely considered to have been one of the greatest symphonic and operatic conductors of the 20th century. By the 1930s he had built a reputation as one of the leading conductors in Europe, and he was the leading conductor who remained...

 began his career there, and in 1913 Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

’s Parsifal

Parsifal

Parsifal is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. It is loosely based on Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the 13th century epic poem of the Arthurian knight Parzival and his quest for the Holy Grail, and on Chrétien de Troyes' Perceval, the Story of the Grail.Wagner first conceived the work...

was given its first performance outside Bayreuth. Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

, Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

, Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss

Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...

, Othmar Schoeck

Othmar Schoeck

Othmar Schoeck was a Swiss composer and conductor.He was known mainly for his considerable output of art songs and song cycles, though he also wrote a number of operas and instrumental compositions including two string quartets and...

, Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger

Arthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born...

, Frank Martin

Frank Martin (composer)

Frank Martin was a Swiss composer, who lived a large part of his life in the Netherlands.-Childhood and youth:...

 and other famous composers all left their mark on the development of Zurich’s musical theatre. Zurich Opera House has been the setting for numerous world premières, such as Alban Berg

Alban Berg

Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...

’s Lulu

Lulu (opera)

Lulu is an opera by the composer Alban Berg. The libretto was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora .-Composition history:...

, Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith was a German composer, violist, violinist, teacher, music theorist and conductor.- Biography :Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt, Hindemith was taught the violin as a child...

’s Mathis der Maler

Mathis der Maler (opera)

Mathis der Maler is an opera by Paul Hindemith. The libretto is also by the composer.The opera's genesis lay in Hindemith's interest in the Protestant Reformation...

, Arnold Schönberg

Arnold Schoenberg

Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...

’s Moses und Aron

Moses und Aron

Moses und Aron is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German libretto was by the composer after the Book of Exodus.-Compositional history:...

. Works by Heinrich Sutermeister

Heinrich Sutermeister

Heinrich Sutermeister was a Swiss opera composer.-Life and career:During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich where Carl Orff was his teacher and Orff remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid 1930s, he devoted his life to...

, Giselher Klebe

Giselher Klebe

Giselher Wolfgang Klebe was a German composer. He composed more than 140 works, among them 14 operas, 8 symphonies, 15 solo concerts, chamber music, piano works, and sacred music.-Biography:...

 and Rudolf Kelterborn

Rudolf Kelterborn

Rudolf Kelterborn is a Swiss musician and composer.-Life:Kelterborn studied in Basel, Detmold, Salzburg, and Zürich, among other places, with the composers Walther Geiser, Willy Burkhard, Boris Blacher, Günter Bialas, and Wolfgang Fortner...

 were also performed here for the first time.

From 1975 to 1986, Claus Helmut Drese

Claus Helmut Drese

Claus Helmut Drese was a German opera and theatre administrator, and author.-Early career:Drese led the theatre in Heidelberg from 1959 to 1962...

 was artistic director of the company. His artistic standards led the company to gain international recognition, through the presentation of the Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, gambist, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the Renaissance style of music to that of the Baroque period. He developed two individual styles of composition – the...

 cycle, with Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt

Nikolaus Harnoncourt is an Austrian conductor, particularly known for his historically informed performances of music from the Classical era and earlier. Starting out as a classical cellist, he founded his own period instrument ensemble in the 1950s, and became a pioneer of the Early Music movement...

 as conductor and Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Jean-Pierre Ponnelle was a noted French opera director.-Biography:Ponnelle was born in Paris. He studied philosophy, art, and history there and, in 1952, began his career in Germany as a theatre designer for Hans Werner Henze's opera Boulevard Solitude...

 as director and set designer.

Since the 1991/92 season, Alexander Pereira has been the company's General Director; his tenure opened with Lohengrin

Lohengrin (opera)

Lohengrin is a romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach and its sequel, Lohengrin, written by a different author, itself...

, in a production by Robert Wilson

Robert Wilson (director)

Robert Wilson is an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called "[America]'s — or even the world's — foremost vanguard 'theater artist'". Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video...

. He has placed great emphasis on promoting promising young artists and new types of performances.

The Zurich Festival has been in existence since the autumn of 1996 with Pereira as Artistic Director; the first Festival was held in the summer of 1997.

Music direction

Franz Welser-Möst

Franz Welser-Möst

Franz Welser-Möst is an Austrian conductor who is currently the music director for the Cleveland Orchestra and the Vienna State Opera.- Biography :...

 became Chief Conductor as of the 1995-1996 season, and from September 2005 to July 2008, served as Generalmusikdirektor (General Music Director, or GMD). In June 2009, Daniele Gatti

Daniele Gatti

Daniele Gatti is an Italian conductor.Official website: He is currently Music Director of the Orchestre National de France, a role he assumed in September, 2008 , and also Chief Conductor of the Zurich Opera, a position he began in September, 2009; his contract is for three seasons, after which...

 was named the next principal conductor of the company, effective in 2010, for three seasons. Also in June 2009, Fabio Luisi

Fabio Luisi

Fabio Luisi is an Italian conductor. On September 6, 2011, he was named Principal Conductor of the Metropolitan Opera....

was named the next GMD of the company, effective with the 2012-2013 season, with an initial contract of 5 years.

External links

• Opernhaus Zurich official website
• Interview with Marc Belfort (former director of the International Opera Center at the Zurich Opera), by Bruce Duffie, May 19, 1987