Claus Helmut Drese

Claus Helmut Drese (25 December 1922, in Aachen – 10 February 2011, in Horgen, Switzerland) was a German opera and theatre administrator, and author.

Drese began his career as a dramaturg at the Marburger Schauspielhaus in 1946. From 1952 to 1959, he was chief dramaturg and director at the Mannheim National Theatre. He was a theatre director in Heidelberg from 1959 to 1962. From 1962 to 1968, he was director of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and gained prominence by inviting several theatre companies from Eastern Europe to the Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden. In 1968, he became Generalintendant for opera and theatre in Cologne. There, he first collaborated with Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. In 1975, he became artistic director of the Zurich Opera House, where his achievements included productions of Monteverdi's operas conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and staged by Ponnelle.

In 1984, Austrian culture minister Helmut Zilk designated Drese as director of the Vienna State Opera in Vienna. Drese began his tenure in 1986 and chose Claudio Abbado as the State Opera's music director. In the following five years, the State Opera experienced a very fruitful period. Abbado conducted both new productions and revivals, among them Un ballo in maschera (staged by Gianfranco de Bosio, designed by Emmanuele Luzzati), L'Italiana in Algeri (staged and designed by Ponnelle), Carmen (revival of the 1978 Franco Zeffirelli-production), Pelléas et Mélisande (staged by Antoine Vitez and designed by Yannis Kokkos), Il viaggio a Reims (staged by Luca Ronconi and designed by Gae Aulenti), Don Carlo (staged and designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi), Don Giovanni (staged by Luc Bondy, with Ruggero Raimondi as the Don), Le nozze di Figaro (staged by Jonathan Miller). Drese initiated cycle of all the major Mozart-operas.

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