+++ Study information days in January at the Departments for Music Education Salzburg, at the Orff Institute and for Choral Conducting - all information here! +++
Univ.-Prof. Dipl.-Ing. (FH)
Stage designer and painter Henrik Ahr studied architecture in Leipzig. In addition to his work at internationally renowned theatres and opera houses, he has been Professor of Stage Design at the Mozarteum University Salzburg since 2010 and heads the Department of Scenography.
He designed his first stage sets for Michael Thalheimer's productions: for Arthur Schnitzler's ‘Liebelei’ at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg, which was invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen in 2003. In 2005 for Guiseppe Verdi's ‘Rigoletto’ at the Basel Theatre, in 2006 for ‘Rose Bernd’ by Gerhart Hauptmann and in 2007 for Bertolt Brecht's ‘Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti’ at the Thalia Theatre Hamburg.
For the director Christof Loy, he designed stage spaces for ‘Intermezzo’ by Richard Strauss at the Theater an der Wien in 2008 and ‘Lucrezia Borgia’ by Gaetano Donizetti at the Bavarian State Opera in 2009.
From 2009 to 2014, he worked with theatre director Mateja Koljeznik, among others, and received the Borštnikova Prize for Best Stage Design for the drama ‘Der Weibsteufel’ by Karl Schönherr in Ljubljana in 2011.
At Zurich Opera House, he realised stage sets for Ludwig van Beethoven's ‘Fidelio’ in 2013 and ‘I puritani’ by Vincenzo Bellinini in 2017 (director: Andreas Homoki).
The opera productions with director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui were also a great success: Philip Glass' Gandhi opera “Satyagraha” at the Basel Theatre, a co-production with the Komische Oper in Berlin and the Vlaamse Opera in Antwerp, as well as Christoph Willibald Gluck's “Alceste” at the Bavarian State Opera in 2019.
Further opera spaces were created with director Michael Thalheimer, such as for Guiseppe Verdi's ‘Otello’ at the Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen in 2016 and for ‘Macbeth’ at the Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen in 2019, for Peter Tchaikovsky's ‘Eugene Onegin’ at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and in cooperation with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf in 2023, for Richard Wagner's ‘Parsifal’ at the Grand Théâtre de Genève and in cooperation with the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf in 2023 and for ‘Tristan und Isolde’ at the Grand Théâtre de Genève in 2024.
Henrik Ahr has a long-standing and close artistic collaboration with opera director Tatjana Gürbaca. He designed the set for Richard Wagner's ‘Parsifal’ at the Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen in 2013. This production was honoured with the International Opera Award in London and named ‘Production of the Year’ by the magazine ‘Opernwelt’. Further joint operas followed, such as ‘Arabella’ by Richard Strauss at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in 2015, Giuseppe Verdi's ‘La Traviata’ at the Oslo Opera House in 2015, Leoš Janáček's ‘Katja Kabanova’ at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein Düsseldorf in 2022, Leoš Janáček's ‘Jenůfa’ at the Grand Théâtre de Génève in 2022 and ‘Il Trttico’ by Giacomo Puccini at the Vienna State Opera in 2023.
The next joint projects in 2025 are the world premiere of Beat Furrer's opera ‘Das große Feuer’ at Zurich Opera House and Richard Wagner's opera ‘Tannhäuser’ at the Grand Théâtre de Genève.
