Director

Alexander Pereira

Alexander Pereira, Director
Alexander Pereira, formerly Secretary-General of the Vienna Concert House, has been Director of Zurich Opera House since the 1991/92 season. He opened his first season with an acclaimed Robert Wilson production of “Lohengrin”, which had inaugurated the Zurich Stadttheater 100 years ago. From the start, Alexander Pereira realised that the continuous development of an ensemble was an urgent task. He also attached great importance to encouraging promising young singers, staging productions in accessible form, and involving the audience, as well as to co-operating with great artists. As a result, international opera stars regularly perform on the Zurich Opera stage and supplement the cast for a period of several weeks. The central feature of Alexander Pereira’s programming is to produce the great repertoire of opera, from Mozart to Verdi, although he also stages contemporary pieces. “Schlafes Bruder” by Herbert Willis, based on the novel by Robert Schneider, was commissioned by the Opera House and premiered in the spring of 1996, and in October 1998, Heinz Holliger’s opera “Snow White”, based on a story by Robert Walser, saw its first performance. In addition, less well-known works in the repertoire are regularly included in the programme, such as Haydn’s “L’Anima del Filosofo”, Giordano’s “La Cena delle Beffe”, Wolf-Ferrari’s “Sly” or the operetta “Simplicius” by Johann Strauss, which for over a century had been considered impossible to reconstruct. With great commitment, Alexander Pereira forged ahead to make the Opera House accessible to the whole canton, which he achieved in the spring of 1995. Since the autumn of 1996, he has also held the post of Artistic Director and was at the same time a member of the Artistic Committee of the Zurich Festival, in whose creation he played a leading role. This was staged for the first time in the summer of 1997. Alexander Pereira’s contract with Zurich Opera House runs until 2012. He is the new Artistic Director of the Salzburg Festival and will take up his position in October 2011.