Andreas Homoki
Andreas Homoki was born in Germany to a Hungarian family of musicians and studied school music and German language and literature in West Berlin. In 1987, he joined the Cologne Opera as an assistant director and evening stage manager, where he remained until 1993. From 1988 to 1992, he was also a lecturer in stage performance at the Opera School of the Cologne University of Music. This is where he created his first productions. In 1992, his first guest production took him to Geneva, where his interpretation of Die Frau ohne Schatten attracted international attention. The production, which was later also shown at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, received the French Critics' Prize in 1994.
From 1993 to 2002, he worked as a freelance opera director, staging productions in Cologne, Hamburg, Geneva, Lyon, Leipzig, Basel, Berlin, Amsterdam and Munich, among other places. He made his debut at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1996 with Falstaff, followed by Die Liebe zu drei Orangen (1998) and Die lustige Witwe in 2000. In 2002, he was appointed chief director of the Komische Oper Berlin as Harry Kupfer's successor, becoming its artistic director in 2004. In addition to his directing work at the Komische Oper Berlin, he staged productions at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the New National Theatre Tokyo, the Saxon State Opera in Dresden and the Hamburg State Opera during his tenure as artistic director. In July 2012, under the musical direction of William Christie, he staged David et Jonathas by Marc Antoine Charpentier for the festival in Aix-en-Provence – a production that was later also shown in Edinburgh, Paris and New York, among other places.
He has been artistic director of the Zurich Opera House since summer 2012 and has since staged Der fliegende Holländer (co-production with La Scala in Milan), Fidelio, Juliette, Lohengrin (co-production with the Vienna State Opera), Luisa Miller (Hamburg State Opera), Wozzeck, My Fair Lady (Komische Oper Berlin), Lunea (by Heinz Holliger), which was named Premiere of the Year 2017/18 by Opernwelt magazine, Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim, Nabucco (co-production with Amsterdam and Madrid), Simon Boccanegra, Iphigénie en Tauride and Salome. At the Opéra-Comique in Paris, Homoki staged Carmen in 2023 and worked on Wagner's Ring des Nibelungen for Zurich from 2022/23 onwards. At the end of his tenure as director in Zurich, he staged Mendelssohn's oratorio Elias there.
Andreas Homoki has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts since 1999.