SEASON 2024-25

PREMIÈRES

La traviata (Verdi)
Theater Mönchengladbach
première: 15 September 2024

Orphée aux Enfers (Offenbach)
Theater Aachen
première: 8 February 2025

Giasone (Cavalli)
Theater Münster
première: 31 May 2025

REVIVALS

Der fliegende Holländer (Wagner)
Oper Leipzig
revival: 15 September 2024

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Britten)
Staatsoper Hannover
revival: 8 November 2024

Lohengrin (Wagner)
Estonian National Opera Tallinn
revival: 8 November 2024

Turandot (Puccini)
Theater Magdeburg
revival: 1 December 2024

Tosca (Puccini)
Oper Leipzig
revival: 4 January 2025

NEWS

PREMIERE ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD
The premiere of Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers was an overwhelming success with audience and press. Aachener Zeitung: “At the Theater Aachen, where Michiel Dijkema is staging Offenbach’s Opéra bouffon in the sparkling French original as ‘Orphée aux enfers’, a few particularly enthusiastic audience members can even experience the final ‘torture bingo’ in the flesh. First of all, the exits are occupied by terrifying hellish creatures, then the big lottery drum is spun and chair numbers are drawn. The ‘lucky ones’ then head straight into the orgiastic ‘pleasure’ amidst a great deal of clamour, tugging and screaming. You could book priority tickets. [...] The composer, regarded as the Rhineland inventor of French operetta, was above all a gifted parodist. He not only made fun of the ruling classes in the guise of gods, but also exposed bourgeois morals with delight. Stage director Michiel Dijkema and his team are so inspired by this that the audience can’t help but be amused. [...] It’s all so wonderfully funny and original ... The (real) time flies by. Because: orgy is everywhere. [...] The audience goes wild even before the cancan, with naked rubber legs flying. The singing and acting is exuberant and rousing.” GrenzEcho: “A real eye-catcher: the gods and goddesses live on the tympanum of the Theater Aachen [...] truly original. The direct reference to the Theater Aachen in its anniversary year (editor’s note: the theatre is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year) is a felicitous idea. The fact that Public Opinion makes her voice heard from the seventh row of the hall with an angry tirade and then storms onto the stage is another. Here, the press gossips in headlines about the unseemly behavior of Orpheus and Eurydice and Instagram posts on a banner feature fake but very amusing comments from horrified theatre-goers, long-dead composers from Monteverdi to Wagner, theatre critics, ballet fans, feminists or animal rights activists, all regarding the production.“ Klenkes: “After the first oohs and ahhs at the sight of the beloved theatre on stage, the first laughs soon followed, from which most of the grateful audience couldn’t find their way out. [...] One clou follows the next, one highlight chases the next, in this fast-paced course of events you could easily run out of breath. But like the audience, the ensemble is also caught up in the maelstrom. In a hellish gallop they flirt, love, suffer and intrigue to the very last note. [...] In the spirit of Offenbach, Michiel Dijkema has created a marvelous parody of much that is sacred to us, be it love, heaven or our social postings.”

PREMIERE LA TRAVIATA
The premiere of Verdi’s La traviata in Mönchengladbach was very well received by audience and press. OMM: “Michiel Dijkema finds a movingly dark ending for La traviata […] Felicitous start of the season in Mönchengladbach: A beautiful, scenically coherent and ultimately touching Traviata [...] an impressive role portrait. Dijkema shows the society in which she moves as highly sexualized [...] Parallels to the present do shine through, as actually the whole ‘historical’ approach is pleasantly clear in its reduction and does not seem museum-like at all.” Rheinische Post: “The premiere shows the strengths of an artistically convincing production. This was evident in the striking vitality of the party scènes in the first and second act. Or, as a contrast, in the third act, in the agonizingly slow dying process of the leading actress, in the grey-black area of ​​the front stage, that belongs solely to her […] a powerful portrayal of personal and social fragility, of respectability, contradiction, decency, intolerance, incomprehensible morality of the Parisian demimonde. […] a completely gripping, enlightening production”
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NOMINATION FOR LOHENGRIN
Michiel Dijkema has been nominated for the Estonian Music Prize for his sensational production of Wagner’s Lohengrin. After Rossini’s La Cenerentola, a production that won the Eesti Teatrikunsti Muusikalavastuste Award, and a controversial production of Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, Michiel Dijkema returned to the Estonian National Opera Tallinn last season as director and set designer for Lohengrin (conductor: Arvo Volmer / costumes: Jula Reindell). The production was greeted with enormous enthusiasm by the audience and press and the performances are completely sold out. 
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PREMIÈRE MADAMA BUTTERFLY IN REYKJAVÍK
The new production of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (conductor: Levente Török) by the Icelandic Opera in Reykjavík was a overwhelming success. The performances are sold out and receive standing ovations. Due to the huge demand for tickets the Icelandic Opera announced an additional show. In the press:“The production by Michiel Dijkema was a window into another world. His staging was lively and powerful, sharp and balanced, with exactly the right amount of humor for such a sad subject. […] one of the best productions of the Icelandic Opera ever.” (Fréttablaðið) “At the fiercely hailed Butterfly premiere, the enormous hall is almost full of people of all ages […] smart spatial art […] optically overwhelming […] Artistically, and even more so socially, the Íslenska Óperan is on a remarkable path.” (Opernwelt)“Michiel Dijkema presented a Butterfly full of heart and humanity, with a staging that opened in a mood of sunshine and happiness and ended with an act of shocking violence. […] Dijkema produced a coup de théâtre for the closing moments” (Opera)
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REVIVAL TURANDOT IN MAGDEBURG
The revival of Puccini’s Turandot at the Theater Magdeburg was an overwhelming success. All performances were sold out and received standing ovations. The press: “hurricanes of jubilation and sold out performances […] theatrically overwhelming” (NMZ) “wild pictures on the stage, storms of applause for the première - truly great opera” (Volksstimme) “the ending surprises and is consistently executed” (Opernfreund) “touching […] a credible interpretation” (Opernglas)

(photo © Siim Vahur, rehearsal in Tallinn)

BIOGRAPHY

The Dutch opera stage director and set designer Michiel Dijkema studied classical piano at the Conservatory of Amsterdam with Danièle Dechenne and at the Utrecht School of Arts with Alexander Warenberg and Alwin Bär. Subsequently he studied opera stage directing at the Academy of Music “Hanns Eisler” Berlin. He was active as a song accompanist and studied interpretation of song with Thom Bollen in Utrecht and with Wolfram Rieger in Berlin.

Michiel Dijkema directed and designed, among others, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande (Dutch National Touring Opera), Bizet’s Carmen (Eisenach and Meiningen), Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice (Dutch National Touring Opera), Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Stockholm), Schönberg’s Pierrot Lunaire (Rotterdam), Strauss’ Die Fledermaus (Eisenach, Moscow and Tallinn), Marschner’s Der Vampyr (Amsterdam), Rossini’s Il Turco in Italia (Leipzig), Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (Gelsenkirchen), Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Tallinn and Dutch National Touring Opera), Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (Gelsenkirchen), Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (Wiesbaden and Antibes), Puccini’s Tosca (Leipzig), Thomas’ Hamlet (Zagreb), Gassmann’s L’Opera Seria (Hannover), Smetana’s The Bartered Bride (Wiesbaden), Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (Darmstadt), Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (Wiesbaden), Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (Kiel), Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Hannover), Gounod’s Faust (Leipzig and Bolzano), Offenbach’s La Vie Parisienne (Volksoper Vienna), Strauss’ Salome (Wuppertal), the world première of Isidora Žebeljan’s Nahod Simon (Gelsenkirchen), Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe (Linz), Kálmán’s Die Herzogin von Chicago (Koblenz), Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Semperoper Dresden), Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Gelsenkirchen), Dvorák’s Rusalka (Leipzig), Haydn’s Il mondo della luna (HfM Berlin), Stephan Peiffer’s Vom Ende der Unschuld (Internationale Maifestspiele Wiesbaden), Louis Spohr’s Faust (Koblenz), Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer (Leipzig), Weinberger’s Svanda Dudák (Gelsenkirchen), Puccini’s Turandot (Magdeburg), Prokofiev’s L’amour des trois oranges (Koblenz), Haydn’s L’isola disabitata, in triple-bill with Krenek’s What Price Confidence and Haydn’s Arianna a Naxos (Amsterdam/Den Haag), Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Reykjavík), Wagner’s Lohengrin (Tallinn), Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims (Aachen), Verdi’s La traviata (Mönchengladbach) and Offenbach’s Orphée aux enfers (Aachen).

Michiel Dijkema won several international opera directing prizes: the second European Opera-directing Prize, the first Peter-Konwitschny-Nachwuchsregiepreis for his concept of Carmen and the Eesti Teatrikunsti Muusikalavastuste Award for his production of La Cenerentola. This award is the most important Estonian music-theatre prize. The set design of Il Barbiere di Siviglia won the first Wizard-Award in Berlin. His production of Der fliegende Holländer as part of the festival WAGNER22 in Leipzig has been nominated for the International Opera Awards 2022 in Madrid. Il viaggio a Reims was awarded by "Der Opernfreund" in the category best stage design/best costumes 2023/24. His production of Lohengrin at the Estonian National Opera in Tallinn was nominated for the Estonian Music Prize 2024.

He worked with the opera class of the ArtEZ Academy of Music and taught singing students and opera stage directing students as a guest-professor at the Hochschule für Musik “Hanns Eisler”  Berlin. Furthermore he lectured in the context of a multidisciplinary initiative at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn. He also worked at the Dutch National Opera Academy (a cooperation of the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatory The Hague).

Future new productions and revivals among others at the Theater Aachen, the Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach, the Theater Münster, the Estonian National Opera in Tallinn, the Oper Leipzig, the Staatsoper Hannover, the Theater Magdeburg and the Semperoper Dresden.

Michiel Dijkema lives with his wife and son near Amsterdam. He rode on his bicycle from Amsterdam to Rome, Santiago de Compostela, Venice, Vienna, London, Barcelona, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and other destinations. In the spring of 2022 he cycled with his then 7-year-old son from Amsterdam to Paris. In the summer of 2023 they cycled from Amsterdam (via Bayreuth) to Budapest.

(updated: 4 March 2025)

CONTACT

info@michieldijkema.com
+31 6 50 46 13 82