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29-682: Operosa was founded by Finnish mezzo-soprano Katherine Haataja in 2006. It was founded with the purpose of promoting young opera and classical music talent and actively providing production work opportunities to young artists. The first open air opera festival was launched in June 2007 in Varna, Bulgaria in the open air of the Euxinograd castle garden with the opera Don Giovanni by W.A. Mozart . The following year festival performances were held in Sofia at

58-411: A graduate programme based on the premise that directors are autodidacts who need as many opportunities to direct as possible. Under Fowler, graduate student directors would stage between five and ten productions during their three-year residencies, with each production receiving detailed critiques. As with many other professions in the performing arts, theatre directors would often learn their skills "on

87-679: Is a Finnish-Swedish mezzo-soprano and entrepreneur, known for her work advocating for young opera artists. She is a descendant of the Hannikainen family of composers and writers, Pietari Hannikainen was her third great grandfather. Haataja was born in Olofström in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Finnish father. She grew up in Helsinki in Finland and then studied vocal performance at

116-459: Is a frequent speaker at international opera conferences advocating the importance of rekindling opera to young audiences. She also teaches privately, coaches at master classes and contributes as jury member at international singing competitions. Since 2006 Haataja's work with Operosa has spanned from Bulgaria to Serbia and to Montenegro . The inaugural festival was held in 2007 with fully staged performances of Don Giovanni by Mozart at

145-735: Is an art form that has grown with the development of theatre theory and theatre practice. With the emergence of new trends in theatre, so too have directors adopted new methodologies and engaged in new practices. Interpretation of the drama, by the late twentieth century, had become central to the director's work. Relativism and psychoanalytic theory influenced the work of innovative directors such as Peter Brook , Ingmar Bergman , Peter Stein , and Giorgio Strehler . Kimberly Senior, director of Disgraced on Broadway, explains her role as director by saying “I get to take things that were previously in one dimension and put them into three dimensions using my imagination and intellect and people skills.” Once

174-762: The Euxinograd castle in Varna on the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria . In 2011 she set up Operosa offices in Belgrade in Serbia where the Operosa Academia activities were initiated. In 2013 she launched the first annual opera event in Montenegro . The Operosa Montenegro Opera Festival continues to promote young opera talent and takes place every summer in the Kanli Kula and Forte Mare Fortresses in

203-708: The Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment in Belgrade in Serbia as well as at Betahaus in Sofia , Bulgaria . In 2013 Operosa participated at the Night of Culture event in Herceg Novi in Montenegro for the first time with a staged performance of La Voix Humaine by Francis Poulenc . The following year in September 2014 Operosa produced an international full-scale opera performance of Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod . Since,

232-649: The Ivan Vazov National Theatre . Operosa returned to Euxinograd in 2009 and 2010 with performances of La Voix Humaine by Francis Poulenc , and Roméo et Juliette by Charles Gounod . In 2011 Operosa produced opera performances in Belgrade in Serbia at the Belgrade Youth Center . It was the first time an opera was performed at the center. 2012 was dedicated to baroque opera with workshops, master classes and performances of Pimpinone opera by Georg Philipp Telemann at

261-590: The Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary. The French regisseur is also sometimes used to mean a stage director, most commonly in ballet . A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène . Post World War II , the actor-manager slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within

290-1124: The Paris conservatory and at Trinity College London . She started her career as opera singer but stopped when she became ill with breast cancer. Haataja performed in different opera houses in Europe and her roles included Cherubino in Le Nozze di Figaro , Zerlina in Don Giovanni , Annius in La clemenza di Tito by W.A. Mozart , Angelina in La Cenerentola by G. Rossini , Tigrinda in Orlando finto pazzo by A. Vivaldi and Carlotta in Die schweigsame Frau by Richard Strauss . She has worked with conductors and directors Steven Devine, Steuart Bedford , Elgar Howarth , Stephen Unwin and David Fielding. Haataja, her husband and their two children lived in

319-666: The Yale School of Drama produced a number of pioneering directors with D.F.A. (Doctor of Fine Arts) and M.F.A. degrees in Drama (rather than English) who contributed to the expansion of professional resident theaters in the 1960s and 1970s. In the early days such programmes typically led to the staging of one major thesis production in the third (final) year. At the University of California, Irvine , Keith Fowler (a Yale D.F.A. and ex-producer of two LORT companies) led for many years

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348-687: The Balkan region and since its inauguration have included the following productions. In 2007 Operosa released a recording named “Perle” under the label Orpheus Music. It features works by W.A. Mozart , G. Rossini , G.F. Handel , A. Vivaldi and Giulio Caccini performed by the Sofia Symphonic Orchestra together with conductor Nayden Todorov , mezzo-soprano Katherine Haataja, guitar by Rosen Balkanski and harpsichord by Magdalena Vasileva. Katherine Haataja Katherine Elina Haataja ( née Hannikainen ; February 16, 1969)

377-607: The Balkan region for many years and following a guest performance in Le Nozze di Figaro at the Sofia National Opera , Haataja initiated the Operosa foundation in 2006. In her opinion the local opera houses did not offer enough opportunities for young singers and that the repertoire was to the most part too heavy and did not support the appropriate development of young opera voices. The foundation champions all opera talent in their studies and early career. Haataja

406-1464: The ENOA network of European opera academies. In 2017 Operosa was selected for co-funding by the European Union programme for culture Creative Europe . The project YOUNG@OPERA was created by Operosa in cooperation with partners Herceg Novi municipality and Ilija M. Kolarac Endowment with performances across Montenegro , Serbia and Bulgaria . Artists who have performed and worked at Operosa include mezzo-soprano Jennifer Larmore , soprano Darina Takova , alto Marijana Mijanovic, mezzo-soprano Katherine Haataja , set designer Jamie Vartan, stage director John La Bouchardiere , stage director Martin Lloyd-Evans , stage director and designer Tim Hopkins, stage director Seth Yorra, stage director Ashley Dean, lighting and set designer Simon Corder, costume and set designer Domenico Franchi, set designer Cordelia Chisholm, lighting designer Kevin Treacy, organist and harpsichordist Jeremy Joseph, conductor Eraldo Salmieri, conductor Predrag Gosta , Sofia Symphonic Orchestra , Varna Philharmonic Society Chamber Orchestra and Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra Operosa events take place across

435-517: The Old Town of Herceg Novi on the Adriatic coast of Montenegro. Stage director A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure

464-1064: The Operosa Montenegro Opera Festival has taken place in the Old Town, the Forte Mare and the Kanli Kula Fortress open air amphitheater in Herceg Novi , Montenegro . A dedicated educational program (Operosa Academia) was initiated in 2012 and is active in Bulgaria , Serbia and Montenegro . It provides training all year round for young opera and classical music artists with master classes , workshops and smaller scale opera performances. Operosa also supports young artists with awards and stipends. Operosa has collaboration and exchange schemes with international opera establishments such as Aix-en-Provence Festival , Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel , Aldeburgh Music Helsinki Festival , La Monnaie , Dutch National Opera and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation through

493-616: The Stage: From Naturalism to Growtowski , and Will's The Director in a Changing Theatre (1976). Because of the relatively late emergence of theatre directing as a performing arts profession when compared with for instance acting or musicianship, a rise of professional vocational training programmes in directing can be seen mostly in the second half of the 20th century. Most European countries nowadays know some form of professional directing training, usually at drama schools or conservatoires , or at universities. In Britain,

522-525: The aid of a long stick, the proceedings of the staging of a dramatization of the Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia . According to Fouquet, the director's tasks included overseeing the erecting of a stage and scenery (there were no permanent, purpose-built theatre structures at this time, and performances of vernacular drama mostly took place in the open air), casting and directing the actors (which included fining them for those that infringed rules), and addressing

551-549: The audience at the beginning of each performance and after each intermission. From Renaissance times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the actor-manager . This would usually be a senior actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing the repertoire of work, staging it and managing the company. This was the case for instance with Commedia dell'Arte companies and English actor-managers like Colley Cibber and David Garrick . The modern theatre director can be said to have originated in

580-410: The complexity of vernacular religious drama, with its large scale mystery plays that often included crowd scenes, processions and elaborate effects, gave the role of director (or stage manager or pageant master ) considerable importance. A miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 (pictured) bears one of the earliest depictions of a director at work. Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with

609-559: The director oversaw the mounting of plays from the writing process all the way through to their performance, often acting in them too, as Aeschylus for example did. The author-director would also train the chorus , sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that the director was called didaskalos , the Greek word for "teacher," indicates that the work of these early directors combined instructing their performers with staging their work. In medieval times,

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638-696: The job"; to this purpose, theatres often employ trainee assistant directors or have in-house education schemes to train young theatre directors. Examples are the Royal National Theatre in London , which frequently organizes short directing courses, or the Orange Tree Theatre and the Donmar Warehouse on London's West End , which both employ resident assistant directors on a one-year basis for training purposes. Directing

667-440: The play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure and philosophy of individual theatre companies. Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration. In ancient Greece , the birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays. Actors were generally semi-professionals, and

696-410: The production. The performance aspects include: acting, dance, orchestra, chants, and stage combat. If the production is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director may also work with the playwright or a translator. In contemporary theatre, after the playwright , the director is generally the principle visionary, making decisions on the artistic conception and interpretation of

725-610: The quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. The director thereby collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff to coordinate research and work on all the aspects of the production which includes the Technical and the Performance aspects. The technical aspects include: stagecraft, costume design, theatrical properties (props), lighting design, set design, and sound design for

754-724: The staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen . The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on the role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, and Germany would provide a platform for a generation of emerging visionary theatre directors, such as Erwin Piscator and Max Reinhardt . Simultaneously, Constantin Stanislavski , principally an actor-manager, would set up

783-560: The theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, became the norm rather than the exception. Great forces in the emancipation of theatre directing as a profession were notable 20th-century theatre directors like Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko , Vsevolod Meyerhold , Yevgeny Vakhtangov , Michael Chekhov , Yuri Lyubimov (Russia), Orson Welles , Peter Brook , Peter Hall (Britain), Bertolt Brecht (Germany), Giorgio Strehler , and Franco Zeffirelli (Italy). A cautionary note

812-536: The tradition that theatre directors emerge from degree courses (usually in English literature) at the Oxbridge universities has meant that for a long time, professional vocational training did not take place at drama schools or performing arts colleges, although an increase in training programmes for theatre directors can be witnessed since the 1970s and 1980s. In American universities, the seminal directing program at

841-473: Was introduced by the famed director Sir Tyrone Guthrie who said "the only way to learn how to direct a play, is ... to get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, and direct." A number of seminal works on directing and directors include Toby Cole and Helen Krich's 1972 Directors on Directing: A Sourcebook of the Modern Theatre , Edward Braun's 1982 book The Director and

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