In a few years, he has become a key figure in the opera staging landscape.
And one of the few to reconcile the ancient and the modern.
Because the audacity of his re-readings is always accompanied by a sense of spectacle that amazes you.
We are therefore awaiting his two productions from Aix,
Falstaff
and
Le Coq d'Or
.
Subversive and unifying, intellectual and fanciful, rigorous and funny, he reconciles qualities that we do not always consider compatible.
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Born in 1967, he discovered theater in high school in his hometown of Melbourne, playing in
Othello
at the age of 15.
After completing his training with the piano and the history of music, he quickly stood out in his country, founding his own Jewish theater company, Gilgul, then taking over at the age of 29 as director of the Adelaide Festival.
The sense of comedy
He made his first opera productions in Sydney, before taking over the direction of a theater in Vienna in 2001, the Wiener Schauspielhaus. He therefore multiplied productions on German stages such as Essen, Bremen or Hanover, but French critics did not travel much to the Germanic province. It is thanks to its debut in Munich in 2010 that we discover it: deemed not very theatrical,
The Silent Woman
by Richard Strauss reveals an innate sense of comedy, with an idea per second and perfect timing. At the same time, his
Castor et Pollux
by Rameau at the English National Opera won him the Laurence Olivier Prize, the most prestigious British theatrical award.
In 2012, he took over the direction of the Komische Oper, the third Berlin stage, regularly regarded as dying: he made it again an obligatory passage, in the service of invention and eclecticism, to the point of sometimes making the other houses seem dusty. .
And to be named “best Opera of the year” by the
Opernwelt
review
in 2013.
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In addition to his breathtaking virtuosity, the most astonishing thing about Kosky is his ability to constantly renew himself. His
Magic Flute
uses the illusions of shadow theater, his
Pelléas et Mélisande
wedges the characters in an expressionist film à la Murnau, his
Orphée aux enfers
at the Salzburg Festival entrusts the spoken dialogues to a cabaret actor while the singers stir the lips in play-back. Everywhere he is the king of ambivalence.
When you think he's comical, nostalgia is not far away (
The Knight with the Rose
in Munich), his humor can at any time switch to creaking.
No one will forget his
Master Singers
of 2017, the first participation of a Jewish director at the Bayreuth Festival.
Brilliantly witty, his hilarious staging of the daily life of the Wagner family suddenly gave way to the Nuremberg Tribunal and a Star of David, before giving way on the set to the orchestra and choir, giving the final say to the music.
Far from reducing his work to an explanation of text, Barrie Kosky is intelligence made a spectacle.
"Falstaff", G. Verdi, July 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13 at 9:30 p.m. at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché
"Le Coq d'Or", N. Rimsky-Korsakov, July 22, 24, 25 at 10 pm at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché