Tatjana Gürbaca

The German director Tatjana Gürbaca (1973) studied direction at the Hanns Eisler Musikhochschule in Berlin, and followed masterclasses with Ruth Berghaus and Peter Konwitschny. As an opera director, she has a large repertoire, going from baroque operas such as Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to 20th-century and contemporary works such as Dallapiccola’s Il Prigoniero, Phillippe Hersant’s Der schwarze Mönch (world premiere in Oper Leipzig) and Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre (Theater Bremen). In 2000, Gürbaca won the Ring Award on the International direction contest in Graz. The year thereafter, Opernwelt gave her the title of most promising talent in opera direction.

From 2011-2014, Gürbaca was opera director of the Mainz State theatre, where she directed Lucia di Lammermoor, Werther and Manon Lescaut (Massenet). Apart from a Tsjaikovski cycle (Mazeppa, Jevgeni Onegin and Tsjarodejka), she created Parsidal at Opera Vlaanderen, the production for which she was nominated as best director by Opernwelt. This production won the Opera Award in the category “Anniversary Production (Wagner)”. Besides numerous productions with important opera houses such as the Staatsoper and Deutsche oper in Berlin, Stadtheater Bern, the Opera of Novosibirsk and the Lucerne Festival, she is praised because of her new version of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen – Die Ring-Trilogie in Theater an der Wien. December 2021, she directed Verdi's La traviata at Dutch National Opera.

Update: December 2021