Christoph Marthaler is awarded Hans Reinhart Ring

The stage director and musician Christoph Marthaler will receive the highest award in Swiss theatrical life, the Hans Reinhart Ring, this year. He is being honored for the originality and international resonance of his work, the Swiss Society for Theatrical Culture and the Federal Office of Culture announced.
The Hans Reinhart Ring is awarded annually for special contributions to theater. It was initiated in 1957 by the patron of the arts Hans Reinhart from Winterthur.

Christoph Marthaler will be awarded the Ring for the “creative originality of his work and the great resonance he has found upon the international stage,” the official statement reads. “His rich productions have been a major influence on the great European theaters during the past two decades”. The director and musician has developed his own theatrical language, together with his “family of actors” and his collaborators Anna Viebrock (set designer) and Stefanie Carp (dramaturge), a style which has become a major point of reference in the theater scene.

Christoph Marthaler was born in 1951 in Erlenbach in the Canton of Zurich, and first joined a theater’s roster as an oboist by training. During the late 1960s, he attended the Theater School of Jacques Lecoq in Paris. After returning to Switzerland, he was first employed as a theater musician and composer at various theaters. During the early 1990s, he showed his first epoch-making productions in Basel, under theater director Frank Baumbauer. From 2000 to 2004, he directed the Schauspielhaus in Zurich, intermittently enduring harsh criticism from political circles.

His Work for the Salzburg Festival

Leos Janáček’s opera The Makropulos Affair marks Christoph Marthaler’s sixth production for the Salzburg Festival. Angela Denoke takes on the role of Emilia Marty, the main part in Janáček’s eccentric stage work. Esa-Pekka Salonen conducts, making his opera debut with the Vienna Philharmonic.

Marthaler’s Productions at the Salzburg Festival:

1996 Pierrot Lunaire / Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps
1997 Zur Schönen Aussicht
1998 Kat’a Kabanova
2001 Le nozze di Figaro
2007 Sauser aus Italien. Eine Urheberei
2011 The Makropulos Affair