Anton Nekovar

Prof. Anton Nekovar was born in Vienna. After studies at a humanities-oriented secondary school (Gymnasium), he pursued his schooling at the Vienna University, where he enrolled for courses in stage direction and acting, as well as in German language, philosophy, and theory and history of drama. In his career as an actor he has created a formidable gallery of roles, among others on the stage of Vienna’s Volkstheater, at various drama festivals, including the Wiener Festwochen, the Donaufestival, the “Nestroy in Liechtenstein” Festival at Baden near Vienna, and at Melk, apart from which he has appeared in various television programmes aired by ORF/ZDF. He has worked as a programme manager and chief stage director at Baden, and as the administrative director of the New Theatre of the land of Niederoesterreich; and was active as an associate professor specializing in singing interaction coaching. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, he was involved in organizing, with support from Austrian government, joint cultural projects mounted by Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. To this day, he has stage directed close to eighty production of operas and singspiels, dramas, operettas, and musicals. His productions have been staged by numerous theatres in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Switzerland; in recent years, they have included for example the operas, Aida; Otello; Un ballo in maschera La Bohème; Turandot; Tosca; Andrea Chénier; Cavalleria rusticana; Pagliacci; and the operetta, The Land of Smiles.

In the year 2000 he created for the Prague State Opera the world premiere production of the opera, Die Physiker (Pflüger/Dürrenmatt/Willaschek). In 2001 he received the Critics Prize awarded at the Czech Opera Theatres Festival by the Music Theatre League, for his production of Verdi’s Otello at Liberec. During the past years he directed Schoenberg’s Erwartung and Puccini’s one-acter, Il tabarro, at the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava; the Austrian premiere of Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, in a new orchestration by John Rhea, at Vienna’s Neue Oper; and a production at the National Theatre in Brno of Beethoven’s Fidelio. In the years 2005 – 2010 he worked at the post of administrative director in the Theater Vorpommern located in the cities of Greifswald, Stralsund, and Putbus.