A change of leadership has been announced today by Bratislava’s Slovak National Theatre. In the opera division, famed tenor Peter Dvorsky, the current artistic director, is to be replaced on August 1st by the Austrian conductor Friedrich Haider.
The changes were announced in a press release by the Slovak National Theatre director, Marián Chudovský. The modern theatre building, in Bratislava near the Danube, opened in April 2007 and includes ballet and theater as well as opera. The smaller old opera house, from 1886, is also still used by the SNT.
Dvorsky, born in 1951 in Partizánske, Czechoslovakia, had his first successes at the Slovak National Theatre, is widely recorded and has sung in top houses like La Scala and the Metropolitan Opera. He will continue the rest of this calendar year as a consultant to complete projects that he was involved with.
Haider, who studied with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, is currently music director of the Oviedo Filarmonía in Northern Spain. In 1991, at the age of just 30, Haider became the youngest general music director in the history of the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, serving until 1994. In the fall of 2006, he celebrated his debut at New York’s Metropolitan Opera with Verdi’s Rigoletto and has conducted major orchestra throughout Europe.
Frank Cadenhead