It has been announced overnight that the next director of the Ruhrtriennale is to be Lydia Steier, an opera director who has made her name in Lucerne and Vienna.
Steier, 47, is from Connecticut, granddaughter of an Austrian refugee. She has lived in Berlin since 2002. Last year she was named Director of the Year by Opernwelt magazine. She will inherit the Ruhr festival from Ivo van Hove in 2027, its 25th year. The appointment is made by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The Ruhrtriennale was founded in 2002 as a platform for the Belgian director Gerard Mortier who had been ousted from Salzburg. Subsequent chiefs have been variable. They include Jürgen Flimm, Heiner Goebbels and several invisibles. Van Hove raised the festival’s profile. Now someone needs to make it fly.
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