Harry Kupfer (born 12 August 1935) is a German opera director. He studied theatre in Leipzig and directed his first opera, Antonín Dvořák's Rusalka, in 1958.
Kupfer was a protégé of Walter Felsenstein at the Komische Oper Berlin. From 1981 to 2002, Kupfer was chief director of the Komische Opera. Since the 1970s, he has also directed productions of Richard Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival, including Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Kupfer co-wrote the libretto with composer Krzysztof Penderecki of Penderecki's opera The Black Mask. He directed the 1986 world premiere production in Salzburg and the US premiere production at Santa Fe Opera in 1988.
Kupfer and his late wife, the music teacher and soprano Marianne Fischer-Kupfer, have a daughter, Kristiane, an actress.
Read more about Harry Kupfer: Recordings
Famous quotes containing the word harry:
“It is now many years that men have resorted to the forest for fuel and the materials of the arts: the New Englander and the New Hollander, the Parisian and the Celt, the farmer and Robin Hood, Goody Blake and Harry Gill; in most parts of the world, the prince and the peasant, the scholar and the savage, equally require still a few sticks from the forest to warm them and cook their food. Neither could I do without them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)