Lighting Designer

Your own daughter’s hand as a prize in a singing competition – imagine that! There could hardly be a stronger sign of the belief in the systemic relevance of art. And indeed, goldsmith Veit Pogner, who offers his daughter Eva as a prize, is just one of many masters from Nuremberg for whom their art is more than just a nice-sounding sideline: it is no less than a community-building and society-improving force. In the Meistersinger, we encounter a group of utopians who are not interested in their origins or money, but in innovation and the future. Eva’s own attitude to the whole thing is, as so often, of secondary importance. She already knows who she would like to be sung by and who she would rather not. Wagner initially conceived Die Meistersinger as a comic opera, and so everything ends on a superficially happy note: at the end, Eva’s crush Stolzing wins the competition and the bride – an impoverished squire, of all people. The future comes from the past, not only in terms of the son-in-law’s origins, but also with regard to the end of the utopia: the whole thing culminates in the Meistersinger Hans Sachs, who mentored the Junker Stolzing to victory, being crowned King of Art: “Heil Sachs!” and glory to the holy German art. In Wagner’s works, the monstrous often peeps through the tiniest of cracks. With the Meistersinger, Elisabeth Stöppler and Cornelius Meister also tell a piece of German history and mentality between awakening and restoration and, in this German Midsummer Night's Dream (Elisabeth Stöppler), focus on the relationship between the generations and the question of why what was is perhaps also what will be.

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg

Stuttgart Opera

Lydia Steier's production shows us three worlds: A dazzling vaudeville atmosphere in which Venus is at home - the first act. Then the cold, restrictive Wartburg world (Act 2) and an illusionless media landscape in Act 3. As a second level, Steier inserts a theatrical journey through time: It begins with the cult that does not separate audience from spectator, then the path leads to sensual baroque theater and ends up in the classic separate spectator-performer situation; finally, Steier leads us into a landscape in which isolation has taken hold and flashing screens draw attention to themselves. Until, in the final moments, she draws a line back to baroque theater.

Tannhäuser

Vienna State Opera

Dora is in her mid-twenties and stuck in the sheltered surroundings of her family. Though she still has her whole life ahead of her, she suspects that the future has only the same old worn and well-known ideas to offer than before. Dora, the 21st century’s new heroine of opera, meets her present with total rejection and finds herself in aimless search for something different. Bernhard Lang's rhythm-driven music becomes Dora’s accomplice. In his opera about a longing for something radically new, Lang and librettist Frank Witzel playfully mix varying sounds from different musical epochs whilst laying tracks to centuries old characters, myths and stories.

EPSG:4326

Dora

The Staatstheater Stuttgart

A premiere as a stark warning against hatred and repression: The 1972 Olympic Games in Munich were supposed to be a sporting festival in the name of peace. Instead, the catastrophe occurred, eleven Israeli athletes were killed by terrorists. The failure of the security forces and the way the Germans dealt with guilt still have an impact today. In the new opera, the lightness of the play is mixed with anxiety and chaos. The production removes the event from its distance and shows us the ghosts of history in powerful images. The sporting disciplines portrayed in the music and the wild jazz of the Steamboat Switzerland trio, which works together with the orchestra, loosen up the virtuoso time and rhythm structure. Corinna Harfouch is one of the most sought-after German actresses.

Echo 72

Opernplatz

“This is a delicate matter, how will it end?”
Countess, Susanna and Figaro
On the occasion of Figaro and Susanna's wedding, Count Almaviva wants to once again indulge in the long-abolished "right of the first night," setting in motion a machine of confusion, intrigue, and doubt that ultimately leads to the exposure of the Count's abuse of power, but also to the possibility of forgiveness.
Only a composer like Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart could have come up with the downright ludicrous idea of ​​setting Beaumarchais's La folle journée ou Le mariage de Figaro to music in 1786 , the most politically explosive comedy of those years—a portrait of a society in upheaval and a nobility once again exercising their privileges and blindly running towards their own ruin. The very first bars of the overture make it irresistibly clear: in this play, every bar, every syllable, every whisper carries the undertone of nervous excitement. There is a standstill only at the turning points, those precious moments in which Mozart reveals the inner lives of his heroes. But the adventure continues, and only the onset of night can bring this "mad day" to an end.

Lighting Designer

Elana Siberski

Events

Upcoming events

Feb 7 - Mar 22, 2026

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg · Staatsoper Stuttgart

Mar 1 - May 30, 2026

The Marriage of Figaro · Staatstheater Hannover

Past events

Feb 7 - Mar 22, 2026

The Mastersingers of Nuremberg · Staatsoper Stuttgart

14 - 24 Sep, 2025

Tannhäuser · Wiener Staatsoper

About

Elana Siberski hasn't added a bio