A N N A ( E T S U K O) T S U R I
B I O G R A P H Y
【as Stage Director】
Anna Tsuri has a strong classic music background and, since her youth, has been a musical actor, pianist, flutist and conductor. After she graduated from music college in Tokyo with a degree in flute and conducting, she moved to Europe to start opera directing and earned her master's degree in Opera Directing at Die Universität für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Wien as the first Japanese Student there.
Since then, she has been active as an internationally-experienced opera stage director for more than 15+ years. Her directed productions were performed at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, The Queens Museum in NY, New Studio Theatre in Vienna, Spikeri Concert Hall in Riga, New National Theater in Tokyo, Gerhart-Hauptmann-Theater in Görlitz, Germany and others.
Anna's production of "Erwartung," by Schoenberg, in Vienna in April 2008 was an especially big success. (The performance video was played more than 19 thousend times on You Tube) The Schoenberg family came from the US to Vienna to see this performance and praised Anna highly, saying:
"My father (the composer, Arnold Schönberg) would have wished for this exact direction. It was very musical and the scenes are exactly according to the text, despite its very complicated content."
She has been broadcasted on NHK, Japan's national TV network, World Flowers Network JFN, a Japanese radio station, and interviewed in Diana, Latvia's largest newspaper, London-based opera magazine Opera Now, the weekly newspaper NY Shukan Seikatsu and Tamariba.com, among others. In 2009 NHK made her the main focus of the one-hour-long documentary "Etsuko Tsuri, opera director in Vienna at Tomohiro Sekiguchi and First Japanese“. The conductor Maestro Seiji Ozawa was featured in the documentary, and lavished Anna with praise:
"Ms.Tsuri is great! She knows everything about the day-to-day operations of opera. I'm certain that she'll become a key figure in the Japanese Opera world. I work on the music side and Anna creates opera on the stage side. She is an expert not only in directing but also in lighting, scenery, etc. She does magnificent work at the Vienna State Opera. I feel positively about her career."
Beside her studies, Anna worked on over 80 productions in her 10-year stay in Europe and USA at international opera houses such as the Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Washington National Opera, Komische Opera Berlin, Théâtre du Soleil à Paris, Carnegie Hall, Bayreuth Youth Music Festival, Dortmunt Opera House, Bregenz Festival, Saito Kinen Festival in Japan, where she worked at orchestra management department, production department, assistant stage director department, technical department, chorus management department and more.
Anna like to include traditional pieces, as well as contemporary pieces in her repertoire: Meistersinger by Wagner, La Cenerentola by Rossini and La Nozze Di Figaro, La Finta Giardniera and Schauspieldirektor by Mozart, Hansel and Gretel by Humperdink, Bergknappen by Umlauf, Erwartung by Schonberg, The Diary of Anne Frank by G. Frid, Noli Me Tangere by Filipe P. De Leon, Song Books by John Cage, GOLD! by L. Evers and The Mountain and the Valley by I.Wallace, which was the world premiere.
Anna’s talents are many and her skills are multifaceted. In addition to her many directing credits, she designed the lighting most of her productions and also for the contemporary opera Dwarf composed by Yoaf Gal and directed by Doug Fitch and choreographed Frolicking with the Birds with music by Marty Regan.
In 2015 Anna founded the non-for-profit organization Opera Pomme Rouge based in Queens, NY, an innovative place for new interactive opera series, and also created the Residence Artists Program. Anna’s goal is to help to young professional singers, pianists/coaches, and stage directors/managers to get anchored in the professional world.
In 2019, Anna has started the next capture of her career in Germany, and working at the Bavarian State Opera House and Bavarian State Theater "Residenz Theater".
【As Conductor】
Anna Tsuri, a native of Japan, began taking piano lessons at the age of six and flute at the age of ten. Since she was in elementary school, she found her talent conducting many school orchestras and choirs. Her first ever concert as a conductor was at the age of ten. The orchestras sometimes had more than eighty members, the choirs eight hundred. Anna’s enthusiasm made her a very beloved conductor.
She completed her studies in concert flute and conducting with great success in Japan. Before she began her studies abroad, she conductet many amateur orchestras, high school brass bands and amateur choirs in the Greater Tokyo Area (or Tokyo Metropolis?) as a music director and gast conductor.
Anna then studied music theater directing at the Hanns Eisler Berlin Music Academy from 2002 to 2004. She also completed a master's degree in music theater directing at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna in 2011.
Since 2019, she has lived in Munich and works at the Bavarian State Opera and theResidenztheater, where in January 2024 she co-founded the amateur orchestra "Resi-Orchester" with employees of the Residenztheater as co-conductor.
She also successfully participated in an international conducting competition in Milan, Citta di Milano, in September 2023.
Since June 2024, Anna has been the music director of the Orchester-Club Nürnberg 1893.
