Lotte de Beer Director

The Dutch opera director Lotte de Beer was born in 1981 and studied singing, acting, piano and theatre directing in Amsterdam, where she won the Ton Lutz award for young directors. She quickly attracted attention with her first productions – Benedict Weisser’s Penthesilea, based on the play by Kleist, at the Kameroperahuis Zwolle and Sinem Altan’s and Kerem Can’s Tango Türk at the Neuköllner Oper Berlin. Peter Konwitschny brought her to Leipzig Opera, where her first production was Clara S. (Chatzopoulou) and her other productions included Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen and Die arabische Prinzessin.

She was then invited to the Holland Festival and the Munich Biennale. She now has many impressive opera productions to her name all over Europe, including: Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, the creation of Robin de Raaff’s Waiting for Miss Monroe and Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Dutch National Opera, Henze’s Boulevard Solitude at the Royal Danish Theatre in Copenhagen, Mozart’s Così fan tutte at the Staatstheater Braunschweig, Massenet’s Manon at Opera Zuid, Puccini’s La Bohème and Traviata Remixed after Verdi at the Wiener Kammeroper, Georges Bizet’s Les pêcheurs de perles and Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orleans at the Theater an der Wien, Puccini’s Il trittico at the Bavarian State Opera, Berg’s Lulu at Leipzig Opera, Tchaikovsky’s Onegin in Bielefeld, Dvorák’s Rusalka and Bizet’s Carmen at the Aalto-Theater Essen, Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman and Verdi’s Falstaff at Malmö Opera, Jommelli’s Didone abbandonata at Theater Basel, Verdi’s Don Carlos at the Stuttgart State Opera, Handel’s Alcina at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Rossini’s Mosé in Egitto in Bregenz.

Together with the conductor Steven Sloane, Lotte de Beer formed the Amsterdam company Operafront, of which she is the Artistic Director. Operafront’s aim is to arouse enthusiasm for the art form of opera among a new generation of theatre goers. Her productions with Operafront include Moonstruck Intoxication (a triple bill with works by Henze, Schönberg and Maxwell Davies) and Caliban (a world première based on Shakespeare, composed by Moritz Eggert).

In 2015 Lotte de Beer received an award in the Newcomer category at the International Opera Awards. In 2018 she was given the Distinguished Artist Award of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA). In 2020 she was nominated in the Best Director category at the International Opera Awards.

Upcoming productions in 2021 include Le Nozze di Figaro at the Aix-en-Provence Festival.

Lotte de Beer is to become the new Director of Volksoper Wien from September 2022.