Eva Buchmann

www.evabuchmann.com

 

Biography

Perceptive, inventive and involving, the productions of opera director Eva Buchmann are responsive to the scale and nature of their environment. Whether conceived for a specific opera house or concert hall, or for touring a diversity of venues, her stagings resonate with immediacy and authenticity.
 
Scrupulous in her interpretation of both the libretto and the score, Buchmann takes a thoughtful, fresh approach, whether dealing with mainstream repertoire, the revival of a rare work, or a world premiere. Her insights derive not only from her experience in music theatre around the world, but from her professional training as a cellist, psychologist and music therapist.
 
Among her projects in 2023 are a concert staging of Beethoven’s Fidelio at Zurich’s Tonhalle, conducted by Paavo Järvi and starring Jacquelyn Wagner and Michael Schade, and a themed pairing of Mendelssohn’s music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Purcell’s semi-opera The Fairy Queen; this will be seen at the Punto Arte Festival in Tuscany, which Buchmann established with conductor Jan Willem de Vriend in Tuscany in 2019.
 
Two Punto Arte productions that have toured extensively in Europe are Haydn’s comedy Lo speziale, striking for its ingenious use of a Fiat 500 as the sole source of scenery and props, and Erich Ziegler’s Ludmilla, a cabaret-infused satire dating from 1944; rediscovered in 2016, it was written while the Jewish composer was interned in the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands. In 2023, Lo speziale (already seen in such cities as Zurich with Tonhalle Orchester, Frankfurt with the Radio Symphony Orchestra (HR), Barcelona with Orchestra Simfònica de Barcelona i National de Catalunya and on tour with Kölner Kammerochester) visits Trondheim. Ludmilla, touring the Netherlands in 2023, will travel in March 2024 to the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas for its US premiere with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
 
Eva Buchmann’s collaborations around Europe with Jan Willem de Vriend include: Don Giovanni (Amsterdam, Basel, St Moritz); Der Stein der Weisen, a singspiel partially attributed to Mozart (staged in Łódź and then on tour in the Netherlands and Belgium); Rossini’s La gazzetta (Basel, St. Moritz with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra); Haydn’s Il mondo della luna (Łódź, Trondheim with Trondheim Symfonie Orkest & Opera); Handel’s Agrippina – originated in in the Netherlands and toured under the aegis of the Dutch government to countries that had joined the EU in 2004 (Prague, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Budapest, Zagreb, Warsaw with Combattimento Consort Amsterdam), and Orlando; Biber’s Arminio; Salieri’s Prima la musica; Telemann’s Pimpinone, and J.S. Bach’s ‘Hunting’ and ‘Coffee’ cantatas at the Leipzig Bach Festival.
 
Among her other productions of Baroque and Classical opera are: Handel's Alcina at the Nikikai Opera in Tokyo (2018) and Semele at the Theatr Wielki in Łódź (2017), and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at the Croatian National Theatre of Rijeka (2018 – also seen in Italy), Così fan tutte for Kraków Opera, and Der Schauspieldirektor for the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich. 
 
From subsequent periods she has directed works by Verdi (La traviata), Rossini (La Cenerentola), Donizetti (Anna Bolena and Rita), Weber (Abu Hassan), Johann Strauss (Die Fledermaus), Mascagni (Cavalleria rusticana), Stravinsky (Mavra) and Géza Frid (The Diary of Anne Frank). In 2018 she staged the world premiere of  David Philip Hefti's The Snow Queen, an ambitious ‘story in music’ inspired by Hans Christian Andersen and commissioned by the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich for its 150th anniversary.
 
Her experience also embraces productions at the Stanislavsky Theatre in Moscow, and at festivals in Carmel (USA), Malta, St. Moritz, Udine and Amsterdam. Born and trained in Switzerland, Eva Buchmann is now based in Amsterdam. She serves as a guest lecturer in stage direction at the Łódź Music Academy.
                                                                                                                         2022/2023