Stefan Herheim appointed adjunct professor

“Stefan Herheim is Norway’s most famous and lauded opera director,” comments Tore Dingstad, dean of the Academy of Opera. “His exceptional international career says a good deal about his ability to revitalise and renew a centuries-old artform, and his appointment will strengthen the department’s academic community and raise the bar here.”

“The demands being placed on today’s opera singers are higher than ever,” Herheim himself notes. “I want to help prepare the singers of tomorrow to meet these demands. At the same time, it is important to inspire and challenge the opera students to take this all-embracing artform to a new level.”

The adjunct professorship in opera directing is a part-time position (0.2 FTE) for a fixed term of six years. The position requires using a mix of tradition, innovation , musical and textual analysis and meticulous craftsmanship to produce new knowledge about opera’s relevance for contemporary life and to pass the artform’s legacy on to a new generation of opera singers.

Stefan Herheim will begin his tenure as adjunct professor in opera directing on 30 April 2018. He will combine his position at the Academy with his work as a freelance opera director.

Stefan Herheim

Stefan Herheim was born in 1970 in Oslo.

In 1999 he took a graduate degree in musical theatre direction after a five-year-long study at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg. Since 2000 he has lived in Berlin.

Herheim has worked with the students at the Academy of Opera on numerous occasions. He has also taught at the Humboldtuniversität zu Berlin, the Hochschule für Musik “Hans Eisler” Berlin, the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg, the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe and the Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, and has also been active as a lecturer, advisor and jury member.

He is a recurring figure at the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet in Oslo and the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, and has also worked at such prominent opera houses as the Royal Opera House (Covent Garden) in London, the Opéra National de Paris, the Deutsche Staatsoper and Komische Oper Berlin, the Sächsische Staatsoper (Semperoper) Dresden, the Staatsoper Hamburg, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf, the Dutch National Opera & Ballet in Amsterdam, La Monnaie in Brussels, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Opéra National de Lyon, the Vienna Volksoper and the Graz Opera, in addition to the two foremost opera festivals in Europe, at Salzburg and Bayreuth.

The Deutsche Oper Berlin has appointed him to direct Richard Wagner’s entire Der Ring des Nibelungen tetralogy in 2020, the first revival of the work in 35 years after Götz Friedrich’s legendary production in 1984.

In 2013 Stefan Herheim received the prestigious Anders Jahre Culture Prize for his outstanding cultural contributions.

Herheim will take over as director of opera at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Austria, starting with the 2022–23 season.

Résumé – Stefan Herheim (pdf)

Since 1964 the Academy of Opera has been the leading institution of opera education in Norway and offers both a one-year programme and a Master’s degree programme in opera. A new three-year Bachelor’s degree programme in opera is currently being developed and is set to launch in autumn 2019.

Media contacts

Tore Dingstad, dean of the Academy of Opera, tel. +47 479 15 374, e-mail: toreding@khio.no
Stefan Herheim, Stefan Herheim, new adjunct professor of opera directing, tel. +49 (0)1701865323, e-mail: stefanherheim@web.de