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Lisenka Heijboer Castañón

Stage director
Associate Artistic Director, Operafront

  • Dutch-Peruvian director and theatre maker Lisenka Heijboer Castañón is fast making a name for herself as one of the most important young directors to emerge out of Europe in recent years. Her work has been hailed as "an important contribution to the renewal of the genre of musical theatre: away from the museum right into the middle of social actuality" (Bachtrack). In 2020, she was named on NRC’s definitive list of talents that will shape the future of their disciplines in the next decade, and she was named by Dutch newspaper AD as one to watch in 2021. These accolades followed the widely acclaimed success of her recent production Faust [working title], opening Dutch National Opera's 2020/21 season. Heijboer Castañón's new production I have missed you forever formed a world premiere as part of their Opera Forward Festival in 2022 and she also made her debut at Santa Fe, co directing a new production of Tristan und Isolde with Zack Winokur.

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  • Heijboer Castañón's work is characterised by her love for music as a tool for storytelling and community-building with a strong instinct for physical theatre. For her, theatre is about sharing space and experiences which starts during the process of creation, where she aims to create her work in radical collaboration with her team. She immersed herself in the creation of opera as an assistant director, and later as co-director in collaboration with Lotte de Beer. Besides her work with de Beer, she has assisted a star roster of stage directors including Pierre Audi, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Monique Wagemakers and Laurent Pelly, in houses including Dutch National Opera, Bayerische Staatsoper and Oper Köln, in a broad range of repertoire from Stockhausen to Puccini.


    In 2020, Heijboer Castañón was asked by Dutch National Opera to create an alternative season opening, in response to the demands created by the pandemic. She assembled an artistic team, and set up an atelier of composers who worked with her in creating Faust [working title]; a production about sharing knowledge in order to build a future. Faust [working title] received great critical acclaim, and was widely received as an example of what the future of opera could resemble.


    Heijboer Castañón was appointed the prestigious Directing Fellow for the Vocal Arts Department at The Juilliard School in New York during her 2019/20 season, where she worked within the Artist Diploma program on acting techniques, and furthering the understanding of the physical aspects of operatic singing. During her time in New York, she created a movement theatre piece with the 15 musicians of Ensemble Connect at Carnegie Hall. Through Movement was a piece about life and loss, wrought through chamber music, movement and light.


    As a young artist, Heijboer Castañón worked at The Royal Concertgebouw and Dutch National Opera, and created new work to critical acclaim for the NJO Muziekzomer, and the Grachtenfestival. In the spring of 2019 she directed a concert staging of Parsifal at the Bochumer Symphoniker, and was invited to direct the International Young Patrons Gala at Dutch National Opera & Ballet. In the summer of 2019 she premiered a new opera for which, with her company Operafront, she was responsible from inception through commissioning, producing, funding, creation and delivery. The work, Vrouwenstemmen, was created for the Grachtenfestival and reflected upon 100 years of women’s voting rights in the Netherlands. The production involved two visual artists creating autonomous work for the performance space, and the founding of a community women’s chorus to star alongside the soloists.


    A truly multi-disciplinary artist, through her work with Operafront, Heijboer Castañón recently collaborated on and co-produced a short film titled An die Ferne with Opera Zuid about isolation and imagination, celebrating Beethoven's 250th birthday.

    2022/23 season / 598 words. Not to be altered without permission.

Performances

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Livestreams & broadcasts

Operafront & Opera Zuid | July 2020
An Die Ferne
Click to watch on the Opera Zuid website


 
Dutch National Opera | September 2020
Faust [Working Title]
Click to watch on Operavision
Available until 19 February 2021


 

"A miracle took place at Dutch National Opera, Faust [working title] is a celebration of imagination, sparkling with Felliniesque finesse."

Trouw

"Vrouwenstemmen is a blissful joined effort of makers and performers, in which everyone and everything seems to have fallen into exactly the right place. The enormous efforts they have undoubtedly made don’t translate into an accumulation, but into quality."

Theaterkrant

"The applause may sound less loud (corona, so no full theatre), but it does sound long and it is genuine. Rightly so, because with Faust [working title], the Dutch National Opera created a production one can only admire."

Noordhollands Dagblad

Intermusica represents Lisenka Heijboer Castañón worldwide.

Julia Maynard
Deputy Chief Executive / Head of Vocal & Opera
+44 20 7608 9902
jmaynard@intermusica.com

Zara Fyfe-Williams
Artist Manager, Vocal & Opera
+44 20 7608 9914
zfyfewilliams@intermusica.com

Lucy Roberts
Assistant Artist Manager, Vocal & Opera
+44 20 7608 9909
lroberts@intermusica.com

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All artists

Chansonnier

HK Gruber

Counter-tenor

Tim Mead

Piano accompanist

Roger Vignoles