Guy Joosten

Guy Joosten, born in 1963 in Belgium, began his career as a theatre director and artistic director of the Blauwe Maandag Compagnie in Antwerp. He was later awarded the Belgian Thalia Prize for his work with the theatre collective, which he co-founded in 1984. Engagements took the director first to theatres in Ghent, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Groningen and Brussels. In 1991 he made his debut at the Burgtheater in Vienna with a production of Lars Norén's "Night, Mother of the Day". Two years earlier he had won the Theatre Festival Prize in Rotterdam with "Nachtwache" by the same author. In 1992, Guy Joosten became head of the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg. The Belgian staged his first opera in 1991 at the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp. He made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2005 with Gounod's Romeo & Juliette and was awarded the Premio Franco Abbiati for Best Director in 2015 for R. Strauss' Elektra at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. He has directed at the opera houses in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Bologna, Brussels, Geneva, Gothenburg, Hamburg, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Leipzig, Lisbon, London (English National Opera), Madrid, Marseille, Monte Carlo, Montpellier, Oviedo, Sankt Gallen, Sofia, Vienna (Volksoper and Theater an der Wien) and Zurich, among others, as well as in Korea and Tokyo. He was appointed Flemish Cultural Ambassador for his work as an opera director. In 2010 he also received the Prix de L'Europe Francophone in Paris. In addition to his work as a director, he was also a professor at the University of Hamburg and taught at the universities of Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Saarbrücken, Maastricht and Barcelona. In Ghent, he founded the International Opera Academy in 2001, of which he is director. He also gives opera courses at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp and has conducted master classes internationally.
At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Guy Joosten staged R. Strauss' "Die Frau ohne Schatten", Donizetti's "Maria Stuarda", Verdi's "Don Carlo" and Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmélites".