Award of the Götz Friedrich Prize

Given that both productions were equally compelling, the jury has decided, for the first time this year, to select two winners. The award ceremony will take place on 19 November 2026 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

For over twenty-five years, the Götz-Friedrich Prize has been one of the most important institutions for promoting outstanding talent in the field of musical theatre direction – winners such as Stefan Herheim, Eva-Maria Höckmayr, Elisabeth Stöppler and Benedikt von Peter are mentioned here by way of example. After the Götz-Friedrich Prize was organised for a time by the German-Speaking Opera Conference, it has returned, as of the 22/23 season, to the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the main venue of the person to whom it is dedicated.

The members of the jury, whose decision was unanimous, are Julia Spinola (Tiroler Landestheater), Dorothea Hartmann (Staatstheater Wiesbaden), Beate Breidenbach (Deutsche Oper Berlin), Wolfgang Nägele (Theater Bielefeld) and Jörg Königsdorf (Deutsche Oper Berlin until the end of the 25/26 season).

The Götz Friedrich Prize is funded by the Friends of the Deutsche Oper Berlin.

The German-Italian director Giulia Giammona received her musical training as a young student at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin and studied directing at the Thomas Bernhard Institute at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg. Her early directing credits include *Vanitas* by Salvatore Sciarrino and *Match* by Mauricio Kagel, both staged at the Bavarian State Opera, where she worked as a stage director. Since 2022, she has been working regularly at the Salzburg Festival. There, she initially led the opera camp with a children’s version of Mozart’s *The Magic Flute* and, in subsequent seasons, staged *L’Enfant et les Choses Magiques* by Maurice Ravel and *Die Kluge* by Carl Orff. In the same year, she directed the world premiere of Georg Friedrich Haas’s opera *Sycorax* at the Bühnen Bern. In 2024, she received the Jury Prize from the Körber Studio for Young Directors at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg for her production of *Penelope*, based on Leonora Carrington. She also works as an artistic collaborator on productions by Romeo Castellucci, including Claude Debussy’s *Pelléas et Mélisande* at La Scala and Olivier Messiaen’s *Saint François d’Assise* at the 2026 Salzburg Festival. Her most recent works include *Cardillac* at the Staatstheater Meiningen, *Träume eine Nacht im Elfenwald* for the Kinderopernhaus Berlin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, productions at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, as well as the world premiere of *Anna A.* by Silvia Colasanti at the Teatro alla Scala. In the 26/27 season, she will direct productions at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, the Haydn Foundation in Bolzano and the Opéra de Lille, amongst others.

In 2017, after two semesters on the Young Singers’ Programme at the University of the Arts Bremen, Elena Artisi began her studies in musicology at the University of Vienna and Sapienza Università di Roma, graduating in 2023 with a Master of Arts. She has been an alumna of the German National Academic Foundation since 2024. Alongside her studies, Elena Artisi worked as an assistant director for various opera houses, theatres and festivals, including the Theater an der Wien, the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music and the Aalto Theatre in Essen, collaborating with directors such as Ilaria Lanzino, Laurent Pelly and Kay Link. In June, she completed her studies in musical theatre direction at the MDW Vienna in Roland Schwab’s class. As part of this, she realised her own projects as a director, including an adaptation of Thomas Bernhard’s *Der Theatermacher*, Peter Eötvös’s chamber opera *Radames*, Ethel Smyth’s *The Boatswain’s Mate*, and, as her final-year production, *Orfeo.Euridice.Schatten* – a reinterpretation of the well-known myth with music by Monteverdi and text by Elfriede Jelinek. In her work, Elena Artisi seeks to push the boundaries of genre and gender stereotypes and to overcome them. During the 25/26 season, she directed Gaetano Donizetti’s *Lucia di Lammermoor* at the Theater Altenburg Gera, where she will also stage *La traviata* in the coming season. In April 2027, she will make her debut with *Gold!* at the Theater an der Wien, followed by a production of Strauss’s *Elektra* at Graz Opera.