Directing student Nada Zimmermann stages Tannhäuser for children in Bayreuth
Once again, a student from the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin will be directing the Bayreuth Festival's children's opera, this year by the young Austrian director Nada Zimmermann. On the premiere day in Bayreuth, 25 July 2025, her production of Richard Wagner's ‘Tannhäuser’ will be performed as an opera for children on Rehearsal Stage 4 at 11 a.m. The Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt (Oder) will once again perform with an outstanding cast of singers under the direction of Azis Sadikovic. Nine further performances will follow until 3 August 2024.
In a team with dramaturgy student Clara Richter from the Eisler, Nada Zimmermann brings the version of ‘Tannhäuser’ specially created for children to the stage. Pauline Heitmann and Hannah Sammann, students at the Weißensee School of Art, are designing the set and costume design for the Wagner opera.
At the invitation of festival director Prof. Katharina Wagner, who initiated the ‘Wagner for Children’ series, Eisler students can realise their directing concept every year, an invaluable experience and great opportunity for young directors, who are supervised in the production by Prof. Claus Unzen. Katharina Wagner is an honorary professor at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin. The directing programme also goes on an excursion to Bayreuth shortly before the start of the festival to attend dress rehearsals and talk to artists and directors.
Nada Zimmermann
Austrian director Nada Zimmermann (*1996) completed her bachelor's degree in musicology at the University of Vienna and has been studying music theatre directing at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin since 2021. She has gained experience as a performer, dramaturge, author and production manager, most recently for the world premiere series of ‘Neue Szenen VII’ at the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a music theatre collaboration of the university.
As part of her studies, Nada Zimmermann staged excerpts from Frank Wedekind's ‘Lulu’, Handel's ‘Giulio Cesare in Egitto’ and Mozart's ‘Magic Flute’. In September 2024, she staged her first self-written multimedia piece ‘End-gültig’. In collaboration with the Schillerchor Berlin, she directed Michael Tippett's oratorio ‘A Child Of Our Time’, which was performed semi-staged at the Delphi Theatre Berlin in 2024 in commemoration of the Reichspogromnacht of 1938. She has worked as an assistant director at the operklosterneuburg summer festival and at the Herbsttage Blindenmarkt festival in Lower Austria, as well as in the dramaturgy department of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, at the Maxim Gorki Theatre and at the Thikwa Theatre in Berlin. Nada Zimmermann has received a Germany Scholarship at the Hanns Eisler School of Music Berlin since 2022.