ANTHONY PILAVACHI

Director Opera Gala

Internationally acclaimed opera director Anthony Pilavachi won the Austrian Music Theater Award for Best Opera Production 2018 with Capriccio by Richard Strauss.

He was born in Cyprus, is an Irish citizen and a resident in Germany for several decades. Pilavachi studied Stage Management at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, as a fellow of the Foundation Princess Grace of Monaco. From 1985 to 1986 he worked as a personal assistant to various directors, from 1986 to 1992 as a stage manager and assistant director at the Bonn Opera and then until 1995 in the same capacity at the Cologne Opera.

His career breakthrough came in 1994 with Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes at the Cologne Opera - Ben Heppner gave his debut in the title role, and GMD James Conlon conducted.

From 2007 to 2010 Pilavachi staged Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at Theater Lübeck together with the conductor Roman Brogli-Sacher. In 2012, his prodution was awarded the ECHO Klassik in the category "Opera DVD of the Year" for the "most important, successful and significant Ring des Nibelungen production of recent years".

Anthony Pilavachi realized almost 90 productions - in Berlin (at the Deutsche Oper and the Komische Oper), in Frankfurt, Dortmund, Nürnberg, Bremen, Oldenburg, Weimar, Augsburg, Meiningen, Chemnitz, at the Leipzig Opera, at the Houston Grand Opera, at the Taipei National Theater in Taiwan, at the Theater St Gallen, Stadttheater Bern, Landestheater Linz, Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck, Grand Théâtre de Bordeaux, Icelandic Opera Reykjavik, in Bergen (Norway), at the Göteborgsoperan in Sweden, at the Schlossoper Haldenstein near Chur (Switzerland), at the Opera Bilbao, at the Teatro Colon de Bogota, at the Dresden Music Festival, the Handel Festival Halle and at the Expo 2000 Hannover.

Since 1994, Pilavachi has been nominated several times as best director by the important magazine Opernwelt, and is considered a "master of character development and inventor of strong images" (Peter Krause, editor of the magazine Concerti).

In 2002 Pilavachi staged the world premiere of Verdi's rediscovered opera Gustavo III at the Göteborgsoperan and in 2004 the German premiere of the same work in Darmstadt. In May 2015, he brought the world premiere of Gordon Gettys The Canterville Ghost based on Oscar Wilde at the Leipzig Opera. A highlight at the same location was the successful German première of Charles Gounod's The Rebel of the King (Cinq-Mars) in May 2017 - the first staged production ever since 1887.