Barrie Kosky was born on 18 February 1967 and is an Australian theatre and opera director.
24 Facts About Barrie Kosky
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Barrie Kosky attended Melbourne Grammar School where he performed in Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in 1981, Shakespeare's Othello in 1982, and later directed his first play.
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In 1989, Barrie Kosky directed the Australian premiere of Michael Tippett's The Knot Garden at the Melbourne Spoleto Festival.
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Barrie Kosky directed Alban Berg's Lulu at the same festival.
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In 1990, he formed the Gilgul Theatre which staged The Exile Trilogy in 1993 at the Belvoir St Theatre; Barrie Kosky was artistic director of the Gilgul Theatre until 1997.
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Also in 1996, Barrie Kosky was appointed director of the Adelaide Festival, at 29 years the youngest person ever in that position.
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In 1999, Barrie Kosky directed Alban Berg's Wozzeck for the Sydney Opera House.
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In 2000, Barrie Kosky directed Ted Hughes' adaption of Seneca's Oedipus at the Sydney Theatre Company.
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From 2001 to 2005, Barrie Kosky was co-director of the Schauspielhaus Wien in Vienna.
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Barrie Kosky directed there Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea, in which he inserted songs by Cole Porter.
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Barrie Kosky directed Offenbach's The Tales of Hoffmann, Shakespeare's Macbeth in an all-female version, and Boulevard Delirium with Paul Capsis which toured around the world for several seasons, including Australia where it won a 2006 Helpmann Award.
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Barrie Kosky's 2003 staging of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo at the Innsbrucker Festwochen fur Alte Musik conducted by Rene Jacobs was shown at the Berlin State Opera in 2007 and broadcast by arte.
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Also in 2005, Barrie Kosky directed Wagner's Lohengrin for the Vienna State Opera.
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In 2007, Barrie Kosky presented his Vienna production of L'incoronazione di Poppea at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival.
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In July 2008 he directed the premiere of Liza Lim's opera The Navigator at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts as part of the Brisbane Festival 2008, a work which Lim had developed during her stay in Berlin; Barrie Kosky had directed her earlier opera The Oresteia.
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In September 2008 Barrie Kosky directed Euripides' The Women of Troy with Melita Jurisic and Robyn Nevin in an adaptation by himself and Tom Wright at the Sydney Theatre Company.
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In October 2008, Barrie Kosky presented his stage adaption of the Edgar Allan Poe short story "The Tell-Tale Heart" at the Melbourne International Arts Festival.
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In 2009 Barrie Kosky directed Janacek's From the House of the Dead at the Staatsoper Hannover, a production that won the Faust award.
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Barrie Kosky has since presented some rarely staged operettas there, like Abraham's Ball im Savoy and Oscar Straus' Die Perlen der Cleopatra.
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Barrie Kosky won the award for Best Director at the 2014 International Opera Awards.
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In 2017, Barrie Kosky became the first Jewish director at the Bayreuth Festival with his production of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.
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Barrie Kosky was the first person who was not a member of the Wagner family to direct that opera there.
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Barrie Kosky returned to The Royal Opera in 2018 to present a controversial staging of Bizet's Carmen that was first staged at Oper Frankfurt in June 2017.
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Barrie Kosky had stated his own intention to return to a freelance career as a stage director with this announcement.