Willy Decker
Willy Decker ( born September 8, 1950 in Pulheim ) is a German opera director.
Life
Decker studied after high school music (major violin) at the Rheinische Music School in Cologne and later at the university theater studies, musicology, German literature and philosophy. Alongside he studied singing with Josef Metternich at the Cologne Musikhochschule. In 1972 he went with 22 years as an assistant director in his first permanent member of the Municipal Theater in Essen, later as assistant to the Cologne Opera, among others, by Hans Neugebauer, Harry Kupfer, Jean -Pierre Ponnelle and Michael Hampe. In 1986 he was senior director of the Cologne Opera.
Since autumn 2005, Decker is a professor of musical theater directing at the Hanns Eisler Hochschule in Berlin. On 17 October 2007 Decker has been appointed the new director of the Ruhr Triennale, which he headed as the successor to Jürgen Flimm since 2009 to 2011. He has since led to various stores worldwide director, so among other La Traviata (2010/2011, Metropolitan Opera, New York City ), Lulu (2011, Paris Opera ) or Don Giovanni (2012, Saxon State Opera Dresden).
Decker, who grew up in the Rhenish Catholicism, now pleads for Zen Buddhism.
Theater career
1978 Decker began with her own directorial work and made soon as guest director at other houses attracted attention over Cologne addition. Above all, the world premiere of Hans Werner Henze's Pollicino the Cantiere Internazionale d' Arte in Montepulciano and the world premiere of Antonio Bibalo opera Macbeth made him internationally known. With the premiere of Aribert Reimann opera The castle at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1991 he succeeded the final breakthrough. Today he is one of the most prestigious and successful opera directors in the world.
He directed at all major German opera houses, at the Paris Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Hamburg State Opera, the Semperoper in Dresden, at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, at the Drottningholm Festival in Stockholm, at the Lyric Opera in Chicago, at the opera houses in Brussels, Amsterdam, Geneva and Madrid and the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. 1999 Decker caught a stir when he refused an invitation to stage at the Bayreuth Festival Lohengrin " for artistic reasons " and thus the first director in the history of Bayreuth was who refused an invitation to the Green Hill.
At the Salzburg Festival in 2004 Decker staged in collaboration with his longtime stage designer Wolfgang Gussmann with great success Die tote Stadt by Korngold. In the festival season of 2005 with a production of Verdi's La Traviata ( with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón ) he achieved a sensational success, the " cult " gained.
2011 Decker staged as the opening event of the Ruhr Triennale in 2011 at the Centennial Hall (Bochum) Tristan und Isolde by Richard Wagner.
Awards
Decker received many honors and awards for his work. Among other things, he was honored in 2006 with the Order of Merit of North Rhine- Westphalia. In France, given the title of Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres conferred.