Claus Guth

Claus Guth (born 1964) is a German theatre director, focused on opera. He has directed operas at major houses and festivals, including world premieres such as works of the Munich Biennale, and Berio's Cronaca del luogo at the Salzburg Festival in 1999. Guth is particularly known for his opera productions of the works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss.

Contemporary opera Guth has focused on contemporary opera. He has staged several world premieres, some in the context of the Munich Biennale, such as Hanna Kulenty's The Mother of Black Winged Dreams (in a co-production with the Hamburg State Opera) in 1996, Chaya Czernowin's Pnima...ins Innere, and Johannes Maria Staud's Berenice, to a libretto by Durs Grünbein based on Edgar Allan Poe in a 2004 co-production with the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz.

In 1995, he directed Henze's El Cimarrón at the Atlanta Opera. He staged the world premiere of Berio's Cronaca del luogo at the Salzburg Festival in 1999, which is regarded as his international break-through. He went on to direct the premieres of Klaus Huber's Schwarzerde at the Theater Basel in 2001, of Unsichtbar Land with music by Helmut Oehring and Henry Purcell there in 2006. He directed the world premieres of Peter Ruzicka's Celan at the Semperoper in Dresden in 2001, The collaboration with Oehring continued with his SehnSuchtMEER oder Vom Fliegenden Holländer at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 2013, and with AscheMOND oder The Fairy Queen at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, performed at Schiller-Theater in Berlin the same year. He directed the world premieres of Beat Furrer's Violetter Schnee at the Staatsoper Berlin, and of Czernowin's Heart Chamber at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, both in 2019.

Other operas Guth directed Verdi's La traviata at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, and in 2002 Wagner's Das Liebesverbot and Parsifal in 2011.

Guth has worked regularly for the Salzburg Festival since the Berio premiere in 1999. It was followed by Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride in 2001, and in 2014 at the Royal Opera House in London conducted by Semyon Bychkov.

In a regular collaboration with the Theater an der Wien, he brought Handel's Messiah to the stage in 2008. The biblical texts of the oratorio were combined with an invented plot; the choirs (sung by the Arnold Schoenberg Choir) were combined with a stylised choreography, and a dancer and a deaf performer who expressed herself in sign language) were added as further layers. The performance was recorded by ORF and has also been released on DVD. Guth began a cycle of Monteverdi's operas in 2011 with L'Orfeo, continued in 2012 with Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and concluded in 2015 with L'incoronazione di Poppea. In December 2013, he worked on another oratorio in a staged version, Schubert's Lazarus, supplemented with further vocal works by Schubert as well as instrumental works by Charles Ives.

In November 2012, Guth staged Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Oper Frankfurt, He also often works with the choreographer . In 2021, he staged Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites at the Oper Frankfurt, conducted by Giedrė Šlekytė.

Awards 2010: Der Faust for Strauss' Daphne, Oper Frankfurt 2013: Der Faust for Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Oper Frankfurt 2018: International Opera Awards (nomination)