Choreographer
Thomas Wilhelm
Thomas Wilhelm received his training at the Palucca School in Dresden. As a dancer, he was engaged at the Dresden Semperoper, the Leipzig Opera and the Gothenburg Opera, among others, and worked in Stephan Thoss' dance company in Kiel and Hanover. This is also where he created his first choreographic works.
He has been a freelance choreographer since 2006. He has enjoyed a long-standing, intensive collaboration with the director Christof Loy. They have worked together on productions at the opera houses in Copenhagen, Stockholm, Gothenburg, Amsterdam, Geneva and Zurich, at the Basel Theatre, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Frankfurt Opera, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, the Opéra de Monte-Carlo, the Teatro Real in Madrid, the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Salzburg Festival and the Festival d'Aix en Provence.
His production of Britten's Peter Grimes at the Theater an der Wien was honoured with the International Opera Award in 2015. He has also worked with Amélie Niermeyer and Sebastian Baumgarten, among others. He is closely associated with the director Nadja Loschky and has worked together at the Theater Bielfeld (including Britten's Death in Venice, Verdi's La traviata, most recently Rossini's The Barber of Seville) and at the Komische Oper Berlin (Hamlet by Ambroise Thomas).
Since Handel's Alcina at the 2019 Salzburg Whitsun Festival, he has worked regularly with Damiano Michieletto, including for Salome at the Teatro alla Scala, the world premiere of Le baruffe at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice, Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at the Komische Oper Berlin, Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris and in Rome, Massenet's Don Quichotte at the Opéra Bastille and most recently MESSIAS at the Komische Oper Berlin.
At the Amsterdam Opera, they created the world premiere of Animal Farm based on the novel by George Orwell (International Opera Award 2023 ‘Best World Premiere’).