Harry Kupfer

Harry Alfred Robert Kupfer (12 August 1935 – 30 December 2019) was a German opera director and academic. A long-time director at the Komische Oper Berlin, he worked at major opera houses and at festivals internationally. Trained by Walter Felsenstein, he worked in the tradition of realistic directing. At the Bayreuth Festival, he staged Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer in 1978 and Der Ring des Nibelungen in 1988. At the Salzburg Festival, he directed the premiere of Penderecki's Die schwarze Maske in 1986 and Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss in 2014.

Career Born in Berlin, Kupfer studied theatre at the Theaterhochschule Leipzig Simultaneously, he was professor at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in Berlin. At the opera, he staged Mozart operas in the order of their composition, including Die Entführung aus dem Serail in 1982 and Così fan tutte in 1984. He also staged there Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in 1981, Puccini's La Bohème in 1982, Reimann's Lear, Verdi's Rigoletto and Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov in 1983, among many others. The Los Angeles Times called the production "high-tech kitsch ... a bizarre stylistic jumble"; The Guardian remarked on a Götterdämmerung "full of paltry gimmickry"; and The Times commented that "the production gets progressively lazier [and] peters out in the clichés of the day before yesteryear, which Kupfer doubtless thinks the last word in modernity".

Kupfer premiered several operas, including Udo Zimmermann's at the Staatstheater Dresden in 1973, conducted by Siegfried Kurz. He staged the GDR premiere of Schönberg's Moses und Aron there, also conducted by Kurz in 1975. In 1979, he directed there the world premiere of Zimmermann's Der Schuhu und die fliegende Prinzessin, conducted by Max Pommer, also the premiere of Georg Katzer's Antigone oder die Stadt at the Komische Oper Berlin in 1991, conducted by Jörg-Peter Weigle, the musical Mozart by librettist Michael Kunze and composer Sylvester Levay at the Theater an der Wien in 1999, conducted by Caspar Richter, and in 2000 Reimann's Bernarda Albas Haus, at the Bavarian State Opera, conducted by Zubin Mehta.

Kupfer and his wife, the music teacher and soprano , had a daughter, , who is an actress.

He died on 30 December 2019 in Berlin.

Productions The Akademie der Künste lists several of his productions, including: 1979: Berg: Lulu, Oper Frankfurt, Michael Gielen 1980: Tchaikovsky: Eugen Onegin, Staatstheater Dresden, Herbert Blomstedt 1981: Leoš Janáček: Jenůfa, Oper Köln, Gerd Albrecht 1981: Richard Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Komische Oper Berlin, Rolf Reuter 1991: Georg Katzer: Antigone oder die Stadt, premiere, Komische Oper Berlin, Jörg-Peter Weigle 1994: Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina, Hamburgische Staatsoper, Gerd Albrecht 1995: Wagner: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam, Gerd Albrecht 1996: Wagner: Lohengrin, Staatsoper Berlin, Daniel Barenboim 1997: Verdi: Macbeth, Bavarian State Opera, Mark Elder 1998: Henze: König Hirsch, Komische Oper Berlin, Yakov Kreizberg 1999: Michael Kunze/Sylvester Levay: Mozart!, premiere, Theater an der Wien, Caspar Richter 2000: Mozart: Titus, Komische Oper Berlin, Yakov Kreizberg 2000: Reimann: Bernarda Albas Haus, premiere, Bavarian State Opera, Zubin Mehta 2001: Schoeck: Penthesilea, Florence, Gerd Albrecht 2002: Britten: The Turn of the Screw, Komische Oper Berlin, 2010: Richard Strauss: Ariadne auf Naxos, Theater an der Wien, Bertrand de Billy 2013: Prokofiev: Der Spieler, Oper Frankfurt, Sebastian Weigle 2014: Richard Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier, Salzburg Festival, Franz Welser-Möst 2014: Wagner: Parsifal, New National Theatre, Tokyo, Taijiro Iimori 2015: Glinka: Iwan Sussanin, Oper Frankfurt, Sebastian Weigle 2016: Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth von Mzensk, Bavarian State Opera, Kirill Petrenko 2018: Verdi: Macbeth, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Daniel Barenboim

Recordings Among his productions available on DVD are: Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten Strauss’ Elektra (Vienna State Opera 1989) Wagner's Der fliegende Holländer (Bayreuth 1985) Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (Bayreuth) Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen (Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, 2005)

Awards Kupfer was a member of the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, the Freie Akademie der Künste in Hamburg, and the Sächsische Akademie der Künste in Dresden.