Biography
Direction, set and lighting concept The American stage director and visual artist Robert Wilson was born in 1941 in Waco, Texas. After studies at the University of Texas he set out in 1963 for New York, to the attend Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute. In 1968 he founded an experimental theatrical company called the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds, with which he created his first important works: King of Spain, The Life and Times of Sigmund Freud in 1969, and Deafman Glance in 1970. Later, as a leading figure in Manhattan’s burgeoning downtown arts scene, he turned his attention to opera and, with Philip Glass, created the opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976. He then began his collaboration with the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival and with many important European theatres and festivals such as the Festival d'Automne in Paris, the Schaubühne in Berlin, the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, the Berliner Ensemble in Berlin, the Salzburg Festival and the Piccolo Teatro in Milano. At the Schaubühne he created the productions Death Destruction & Detroit (1979) and Death Destruction & Detroit II (1987), and at the Thalia he presented the groundbreaking musical works The Black Rider (1991) and Alice (1992). He staged Parsifal in Hamburg, Houston, and Los Angeles, and Lohengrin at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, The Magic Flute, Madame Butterfly, Pelléas and Mélisande at the Paris Opera and Salome at Teatro alla Scala in Milano. In the Lincoln Center Festival in 2005 he presented a project based on an Indonesian epic poem titled I La Galigo. Wilson continues to direct revivals of his most celebrated productions, including The Black Rider in London, San Francisco, Sydney, and Los Angeles, The Temptation of St. Anthony in Paris, New York and Barcelona, Erwartung in Salzburg and Berlin, Madame Butterfly at the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow, and Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen in Zurich and Paris. In Prague’s National Theatre he created a highly-acclaimed staging of Janáček’s Fate in 2002. Wilson is also an esteemed visual artist, having exhibited his works in prestigious museums and galleries in Europe, the United States, Asia, and Latin America, including for example the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, London's Clink Street Vaults, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, the Mori Museum in Tokyo, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai, and at the National Museum in Singapore. For more information, visit www.robertwilson.com Update: June 2010