Stage director Anna Bernreitner studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. In 2011, she founded OPER RUND UM, an artist collective dedicated to staging opera in unconventional locations. Over the past decade, she has directed and produced numerous productions in unique settings, bringing opera to swimming pools, abandoned factories, deep forests, and the streets. Her innovative work with OPER RUND UM earned her the Cultural Recognition Prize of the region of Lower Austria in 2017 and the Austrian Music Theatre Prize in 2019.
Bernreitner has directed several children’s operas at Theater an der Wien and staged Tchaikovsky’s The Slippers at Theater für Niedersachsen. She has collaborated multiple times with the Wir sind Wien.Festival and has also worked with the Salzburg Festival, Jeunesse Wien, and the Philharmonie Luxembourg. In the summer of 2021, she was responsible for staging the Vienna State Opera’s touring production in collaboration with the Donauinselfest Wien. For the Bayerische Staatsoper, she directed pop-up performances in public spaces for the opening of the 2021/22 season, as well as the children’s opera Max and the Superheroes.
The Future of Opera: Discovering New Stages with Endless Creativity
In France, her recent staging includes The Magic Flute at the Opéra National de Lorraine and Opéra National Montpellier. At the Theater Bielefeld, she directed The Abduction from the Seraglio, and at the Theater Magdeburg, The Golden Cockerel and The Love for Three Oranges, a co-production with the Opéra National de Lorraine and Theater St. Gallen. In the summer of 2023, she worked open-air once again in Braunschweig, staging Tosca at the Burgplatz Open Air. Her most recent productions were La Bohème at the Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck and an open-air Fairy Queen by Purcell at an altitude of 1400 meters in the Swiss Alps.
Highlights of the 2024/25 season include the revival of The Love for Three Oranges at Theater St. Gallen, a new production of Indigo and the 23 Robbers at the Johann Strauß Festival in Vienna, and Schön ist die Welt at the Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck.
In November 2021, her staging of Proserpina by Wolfgang Rihm premiered at the Neue Oper Wien and was awarded the Götz Friedrich Prize.
