Stage Direction »La sonnambula«

Michael Sturminger

Michael Sturminger studied directing as well as screenplay writing and drama at the University for Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna. Since 1990 he has worked as a freelance author and director for film, acting and opera. The stations of his career include the Zurich Opera House, the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Theater an der Wien, the Viennese Staatsoper, the Viennese Volksoper, Stadttheater Klagenfurt, the opera houses of Graz, Cologne, Wiesbaden, Wuppertal, Gelsenkirchen, Winterthur, Krefeld, Mönchengladbach and the Landestheater Innsbruck. He has additionally been a guest at Festival Wien Modern, the Ruhr Festival in Recklinghausen, the Prague Spring Festival, the White Nights Festival of St. Petersburg, the Sydney Festival, the Toronto Festival as well as the Bregenz and Salzburg Festivals.

A focus of his work has been his preoccupation with Mozart, leading him to stage, among others »Die Entführung aus dem Serail«, »Così fan tutte«, »Il sogno di Scipione«, »La clemenza di Tito« and »Idomeneo« and additionally to write the libretto for Bernhard Lang's opera »I hate Mozart«. He has also directed other works like »Le Grand Macabre«, »Gloria«, »Gormenghast« and »Ariadne auf Naxos«, with »Wiener Blut«, »Eine Nacht in Venedig«, »Der lustige Krieg«, »Die Fledermaus« and »Die Csárdásfürstin« as well as in the acting in the premieres of »Du bleibst bei mir« and »Jedem das Seine« as well as with »Hiob«, »Peer Gynt«, »Tartuffe«, »As You Like It«, »Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald« and »Waiting for Godot«.

In 2004 he produced his first cinema film »Hurensohn« that was represented at many international festivals and won several awards. In early May 2008 the musical theatre project »The Infernal Comedy« initiated by Martin Haselböck premiered in Los Angeles and for which Michael Sturminger wrote the text for the main actor and producer John Malkovich. A »European« version of the work followed which was brought out in 2009 in the Ronacher Theater in Vienna and by the end of 2011 was performed in more than 40 cities from Istanbul to Paris, Toronto and St. Petersburg before more than 80,000 viewers. Further collaboration with Martin Haselböck, John Malkovich and Michael Sturminger led to the project »The Giacomo Variations«, which premiered in August 2011 at the Ronacher. The production has since been seen in more than 30 performances in St. Petersburg, Sydney, Versailles, Luxembourg, Turku and Hamburg and received numerous invitations from Europe, Asia and America.

In the summer of 2013 there followed in Lisbon the film shooting of the cinema version of »The Giacomo Variations« with John Malkovich, Veronika Ferres, Lola Naymark, Fanny Ardent, Maria João Bastos, Victoria Guerra and international opera singers like Miah Persson, Anna Prohaska, Barbara Hannigan, Jonas Kaufmann, Kate Lindsey, Topi Lehtipuu, Kirsten Avemo, Florian Boesch and Christopher Purves. In the summer of 2014 Sturminger staged H. K. Gruber's new opera »Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald« for the Bregenz Festival and for which he wrote the libretto adapted from Ödon von Horváth. In the same year, the Schwetzingen Festival showed Bernhard Lang's new opera »Reigen« in Sturminger's Schnitzler adaptation. Since the summer of 2014 Michael Sturminger has been manager of the Perchtoldsdorf Summer Festival.