Ursel Herrmann

Biography

Ursel Herrmann was raised in the German Democratic Republic and studied at Berlin’s Free University prior to being engaged (1980–1984) as Dramaturg by the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg. During that time she also work on the exhibition Inszenierte Räume which was shown at the Hamburg Kunstverein. Since 1982 she has been half of a directing team with her husband, Karl-Ernst Herrmann, which offered Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito as their debut vehicle at theThéâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels, and for the same theater, La finta giardiniera and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, which were also presented at the Vienna Festival. Their Brussels La traviata was later revived in Düsseldorf and their Zauberflöte at the 1991 Salzburg Mozart Week. From 1992 through 2001 the Herrmanns numbered among the core Salzburg Festival directors of the Mortier era, creating five new productions: La clemenza di Tito (1992), La finta giardiniera (1992), the Mozart-based scenic sequence Ombra felice (1994), Les Boréades (1999), and Idomeneo (2000). With Ferdinand Raimund’s Der Bauer als Millionär at the 1996 Vienna Festival they engaged in their first non-musical collaboration. Earlier, two Handel operas were staged by the Herrmanns, Semele for the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Innsbruck Festival for Early Music, and Giulio Cesare at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam. From 1994 to 2002 Ursel und Karl-Ernst Herrmann also taught stage and costume design at the Academy of Visual Arts in Munich. In the National Theatre she staged with a great success Mozart's operas La clemenza di Tito (2006) and La finta giardiniera (2008).

Update: 2012