Thaddeus Strassberger

American opera stage director and set designer Thaddeus Strassberger, first prize winner of the 2005 European Opera Directing Prize for the production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola at the Opera Ireland, has to his credit as stage director, and in most cases also designer, an impressive list of highly acclaimed productions. Among others, they include the above-mentioned La Cenerentola (Opera Ireland, Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden), Thomas’s Hamlet and Verdi’s Aida (Lyric Opera of Kansas City), Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Theater Augsburg), La traviata (Arizona Opera), Ariadne auf Naxos (Wolftrap Opera), La fanciulla del West (Opéra de Montréal), and the rarely performed opera by Rossini, La Gazzetta (Wildbad Festival), which was nominated for the Opernwelt magazine’s 2007 awards in the Best Staging and Best Production categories. His widely acclaimed production of Die Zauberflöte was mounted by Utah Opera, Madison Opera, and Arizona Opera. In the 2009/2010 season, his new productions included Meyerbeer’s Les huguenots (Bard Summer Festival), Le nozze di Figaro (Norwegian National Opera, Oslo), and Hamlet (Washington National Opera, with Plácido Domingo conducting). During the 2010/2011 season, he is making his debut at Opera Boston, with a new production of Fidelio, will make a comeback to Oslo with Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia, and will stage La fanciulla del West at the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck.

Strassberger received his degree from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. He won a Fulbright Fellowship which enabled him to study scenic design at La Scala in Milan in 2001. During the first several years of his career he worked as an assistant director for opera productions at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari, the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, the Houston Grand Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Santa Fe Opera and Opera Colorado, among others.