Barbora Horáková Joly
Award-winning Barbora Horáková from Prague is stage director for Katja Kabanova in Bergen autumn 2023.
Barbora Horáková Joly was born in Prague, and studied as a singer at the music academies of Basle and Geneva. As a member of the Swiss International Studio she won several prizes in competitions before she decided to switch to opera directing, and moved on to Munich’s Bavarian (Bayerische) Theaterakademie.
Her close collaboration with stage director Calixto Bieito began with Parra’s and Klaus’s opera Wilde at Schwetzingen Festival in 2015, and she subsequently collaborated on a series of major Bieito productions, including From the House of the Dead (Janáček) War Requiem (Britten), Tannhäuser (Wagner) – and Die Soldaten (Zimmermann).
La voix humaine by Poulenc, premiered in Neuchâtel, marked Barbora Horáková Joly's debut as a director in her own right. Afterwards she has staged operas like L'enfant et les sortilèges (The Child and the Spells) in Basle, Pelléas et Mélisande by Debussy in Oslo (2017) and Basle, Monteverdi’s L'Orfeo – and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas in Bilbao.
Barbora Horáková Joly was honored as "Newcomer of the Year" 2018 by the International OPERA Awards in London.
Autumn 2022 she staged Vivaldi’s opera Il Giustino at Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin, with René Jacobs as conductor, before she spring 2023 returned to her hometown to direct Verdi’s Rigoletto at the State Opera in Prague.
After Katya Kabanova here in Bergen, she travels to Weimar to direct Der fliegende Holländer, which premieres in December at Deutsches Nationaltheater.
Spring 2024 she will be at Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck for The Marriage of Figaro, and then at the Semperoper in Dresden for Benvenuto Cellini by Berlioz.
Updated October 2023