RING AWARD 25 Finals
The RING AWARD is the foremost international competition for emerging talent in music theatre direction, set and costume design. The Grand Finale of the RING AWARD 25 sees three young directing teams stage their production concepts of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (Acts II-III) on the stage of Schauspielhaus Graz.
Celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, the RING AWARD stands for creativity, originality and passion in music theatre. It offers young artists from around the globe a professional platform to plan, present and stage their ideas for contemporary music theatre. In this edition of the RING AWARD, a record number of 353 young artists from 38 nations took part and developed innovative production concepts for the competition opera L’Orfeo in 109 teams. Following an anonymised first assessment phase, nine teams from twelve countries were nominated for the semifinal in Graz, where they presented their concepts and stage design models in front of a live audience and the distinguished international jury. For the Finals, you can be sure to expect three completely different perspectives on the Orpheus myth. Which version will win over the audience and jury?
L’Orfeo. The Myth Next Door
Saturday 28 June 2025 at 11:30 CET
Team
Director: Maria Chagina (Russia)
Set and costume design: Anna Agafonova (Israel)
Dramaturgy: Sören Sarbeck (Germany)
Maria Chagina and Sören Sarbeck have been working together since their studies at the August Everding Theatre Academy in Munich, where they developed the opera Invitation to a Beheading together. For L’Orfeo, the stage and costume designer Anna Agafonova joins their team. Together they are looking for a music theatre that draws on everyday experiences and is located at the transition between drama and opera.
Anna Agafonova graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre School and has worked in various theatres in Russia, including the Gogol Centre and the Moscow Youth Theatre. She currently lives and works in Israel.
After graduating from the Moscow GITIS, Maria Chagina staged Orff’s The Moon in Yakutsk and an evening about Carola Neher for the human rights organisation Memorial in Moscow before emigrating to Germany. She is a fellow of the Akademie Musiktheater heute.
Dramaturg and librettist Sören Sarbeck is currently engaged at Theater Lübeck after a traineeship at Bayerische Staatsoper.
Cast
Orfeo: Peter Grdadolnik, SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana
Messagiera: Justina Vaitkutė, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Pastore: Kevin King, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Speranza: Corina Koller, Oper Graz
Caronte: Camilo Olguín, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Old Orfeo: Gerhard Balluch
Voice of Apollo: Luca Skupin
Musical Director and Piano: Ihor Kolomiiets, University of Music and Performing Arts
Graz
Extras, Oper Graz:
Alina Fedorova, Antonija Ferencina, Gernot Gölles, Gerrit Langer, Klara Prexl, Martin
Stoff
Stage Manager: Otto Kolleritsch
Assistant Director: Jasmin Karami
The Concept
Orpheus and Eurydice have spent a long life together and have grown old side-by-side. Now Eurydice has died. Orpheus finds himself alone in his apartment, isolating himself from his environment. Only his grown-up son Apollo tries to maintain contact with the increasingly inaccessible man.
An old melody begins to haunt Orpheus’s mind, taking him back to his youth. Long-deceased friends appear and celebrate the wedding of Eurydice and Orpheus. But the veil of aging covers all; the celebration turns into a funeral procession. Orpheus’s apartment transforms into the underworld, becoming a hell for him. The narrow spaces expand into an endless landscape in which the frail man finds himself helpless. The river Styx begins to flood the apartment. On its shore a lost diver sits, whom the ship’s crew may well have presumed dead. Searching for an exit, Orpheus sings out into the void, but only the echo responds. Will a ship come to ferry him across the waters?
Orpheus as the eternal myth of aging—within the 60 square meters of the apartment next door and in the inner infinity of loneliness.
Orfeo – Recording in Session
Saturday 28 June 2025 at 16:30 CET
Team
Director: Franciska Éry (Hungary)
Set and costume design: Peter Butler (Great Britain)
Lighting design: Mathieu Cabanes (France)
We’re artists from Hungary, France and the UK, interested in spatial relations and an interdisciplinary approach to opera.
Hungarian director Franciska Éry puts cultural belonging and the audience experience in the forefront of her work. Past projects have received the OffWestend Award for Best Opera Production, Highlights of Hungary, and nominated for the FEDORA prize.
Peter Butler is a visual artist specialising in set and costume design. Credits include Shut Up I’m Dreaming (National Theatre London), A Taste Of Honey (Royal Exchange Manchester), The Shape of Things (Park 200). He won the Linbury Prize for Stage Design and nominated for the Stage Debut Award.
Mathieu Cabanes is a French lighting designer. Credits include La Belle au Bois Dormant (Opéra National de Lyon), Don Pasquale, Le Climat, Séisme (Opéra National de Montpellier), and several productions by Bob Wilson. He works with Concept K, Lab212, Maison Hermès, MISK Art Institute, Saudi Arabia and the Times Art Museum, China.
Cast
Tony Auer / Orfeo: Markus Butter, Oper Graz
Pastore: Martin Fournier, Oper Graz
Messagiera: Lora Pavletić, SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana
Speranza: Polona Kopač Trontelj, SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana
Caronte: Vladimir Jakšić, SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana
Musical Director and Piano: Eunyoung Joo, University of Music and Performing Arts
Graz
Extras, Oper Graz:
Sarah Auer / Euridice: Elisabeth Besser
LM / La Musica: Heidrun Steidl
Stage Manager: Borut Marter
Assistant Director: Nora Peierl
Consultant Sound Design: Lev Toystore
With music by Claudio Monteverdi: Orfeo, SV 318 – Michel Corboz
Courtesy of Warner Classics.
The Concept
Tony is a superstar singer. He is married to Sarah, who is also a singer. They work together and tour the world, but their marriage is in crisis.
We meet them at a recording session where they are booked together to sing the parts of Orfeo and Euridice in Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. La Musica, the sound engineer, is running the session. But Tony is wobbly – he self-medicates to keep his anxiety at bay, he is unfaithful to his wife to feel desired, and he is terrified of being overshadowed by Sarah. As the session progresses, he finds it harder to distinguish his ‘trip’ from reality, finding himself in his own personal underworld, where he has to face his insecurities and save his marriage.
We believe that the archetype of the male hero is in crisis. Gone are the days where we can tell the story of a man singing about how much he loves his wife without ever hearing from the woman herself; where we can follow the hero’s journey without understanding the person he is trying to save. In Monteverdi’s opera, Euridice has 4 lines in total. Where is she in this opera? In our recording studio we invite our audience to ask the question: who gets to have a voice?
Orfeo. The End of Things
Sunday 29 June 2025 at 10:30 CET
Team
Director: Giorgio Pesenti (Italy)
Set and costume design: Giulia Bruschi (Italy)
Set and costume design: Riccardo Mainetti (Italy)
Dramaturgy: Elena Patacchini (Italy)
Video and sound design: Matteo Castiglioni (Italy)
As a team, we want to explore the social and political power of musical theatre to question our times.
Giorgio Pesenti, director and pianist, is Daniele Abbado’s assistant, with whom he worked in theatres such as La Scala and La Fenice. He cofounded Opera Popolare, that combines social and theatrical issues.
Giulia Bruschi, set and costume designer, trained in Architecture at Politecnico of Milan and in Set and Costume Design at Brera Academy.
Riccardo Mainetti, set designer, trained in Theatre Design at Brera Academy in Milan. Together, they designed Aida in Teatro Sociale Como with a social choir and a collaborative workshop process.
Elena Patacchini, playwright and dramaturg, finalist at the 2023 Biennale Teatro. She worked in theatre such as Teatro Stabile del Veneto and Teatro Nazionale di Genova. She is cofounder of Opera Popolare.
Matteo Castiglioni, composer and multimedia artist, worked at Opera di Roma and at Biennale di Venezia, focusing on live-visuals and site-specific projects.
Cast
Orfeo: Felix Heuser, Alumni of University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Pastore: Edvard Strah, SNG Opera and Ballet Ljubljana
Messagiera: Neira Muhić, Oper Graz
Speranza: Beatriz Gaudencio Ramos, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz
Caronte: Will Frost, Oper Graz
Old Orfeo: Ruggero Dondi
Musical Director and Piano: Stefan Birnhuber / Naor Shani, Oper Graz
Extras, Oper Graz:
Young Euridice: Valentina Butter
Old Euridice: Herta Lenz
Stage Manager: Roland Fischer
Assistant Director: Markus Schauermann
The Concept
As Europeans, we are not accustomed to early, sudden deaths, such as Euridice’s in the myth. Europe is increasingly aging, with more than 90 million elderly people and many of them receiving inadequate assistance. The Euridice we release into the realm of Pluto could be anybody’s older parent. We are Orfeo as this myth urgently calls to reflect on our present relationship with death.
In our narrative, the hero is an old man forced to face a double conflict: on the one hand, to overcome the death of the person he loved all his life, and on the other, alone, locked up in a retirement home, forced to deal with his impending death, with the inability to be independent. He is a man split in two: his body is aging, but his voice still sings for love. Isolated and surrounded by strangers in uniform, Orfeo seeks refuge in the past. In the retirement home, he forgets Euridice’s death and makes a plan to escape and find his lost love. The retirement home turns into a baroque theatre where Orfeo stages his final journey. Like in a fairy tale, the hero flees. Outside, he encounters the city: a modern, fast, consumerist world. Orfeo accepts the journey into contemporary hell and finds Euridice. With the fiercest form of love, she helps Orfeo to turn around. By looking back and accepting life Orfeo will organize his memories and surrender to the end of things.
