CARMEN JAKOBI  // OPERA & THEATRE DIRECTOR  // ASSOCIATE ARTIST, LONGBOROUGH OPERA

 

Opera productions include Die Tote Stadt, Longborough Festival Theatre, 21, 23, 25, 27 June 2022. Tristan und Isolde to great audience reception and critical acclaim for Longborough Festival Opera; semi-staging Die Walkuere Act 1 for the inaugural gala of Festival Theater Hudson NY October 2021 via Zoom; Il Trovatore, Un Ballo in Maschera, Don Giovanni, for Winslow Hall Opera, UK; John Harbison’s Full Moon in March at the London Festival of American Music; the world premiere of Nicola LeFanu’s Dream Hunter in Wales and London; Tristan und Isolde semi-staged for Stavanger Norway European City of Culture; Nicola LeFanu’s Dawnpath for Cardiff  Festival, Wales UK; for Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama, Cardiff: Luciano Berio’s Recital 1, Dimitris Maramis’s The Women of Troy – a chamber opera, Handel’s Tirsi Clori e Fileno, Baroque opera projects, schools operas, opera scenes, Shakespeare projects, Stanislavsky projects; for Birmingham UK Conservatoire Monteverdi’s Orfeo; education projects for Welsh National Opera and Scottish Opera.

Theatre productions include Farinelli and the King by Claire van Kampen for SouthWest Shakespeare, Arizona; Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Goethe Theater Frankfurt, Germany; many productions for the company she founded and directed for 11 years in Cardiff, Wales UK: Triangle trilingual Theatre Company including Becket’s Waiting for Godot (in French) and Brecht’s Mother Courage and her children (in German).

She was Associate Director on Alan Privett’s and Anthony Negus’s legendary Der Ring des Nibelungen for Longborough Festival Opera 2013.

As a staff director for Welsh National Opera, Carmen assisted great international directors. Revival director for Stephen Medcalf’s Seraglio in Thessalonica Greece, having worked extensively in Italy assisting Stephen Medcalf on Die Zauberflöte and Seraglio, also in Valencia, Spain. For Opera Theater Pittsburgh, PA she assisted Jonathan Eaton on Jonathan Dove’s reduced Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
Born in Freiburg Germany of a German mother and French father, she read Modern Languages at Freiburg University, Drama at the Sorbonne, Paris, and trained at the Sherman Theatre Cardiff and Welsh National Opera.

Future production:

Muse without a Name: The East Western Divan - by Goethe & Hafiz, 
An international, cross-cultural collaboration with Melbourne based theatre practitioners and Iranian dancer-puppeteer Elnaz Sheshgelani, Melbourne 2023.