In the 2023/2024 season, Nina Russi will work for the first time on a production at Staatstheater Darmstadt. After celebrating great successes with the baroque operas Bajazet (Il Tamerlano) by Antonio Vivaldi at the Staatstheater Nürnberg as well as Serse by Georg Friedrich Händel at the Opernhaus Zürich / Theater Winterthur, she will again dedicate herself to this repertoire.

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The premiere of Nina Russi's production of Georg Friedrich Handel's opera Serse at the Zurich Opera House / Theater Winterthur was a great success: "Xerxes in the telenovela - how to bring baroque opera into the present" was the headline of the NZZ, "Great Händel cinema in Winterthur" of the Südkurier.

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Violetta Valéry is young, desired and terminally ill. And she has a secret. With highly emotional arias and duets as well as rushing festive music, Giuseppe Verdi illustrates the reality of Violetta's life in his successful work, which premiered in 1853.

Theater St. Gallen presents Verdi's classic about a woman who is both fragile and strong-willed, who fights for her self-determination but ultimately breaks down in the face of social constraints and norms, in a new interpretation by the young Swiss director Nina Russi. Chief conductor Modestas Pitrenas is in charge of the musical direction.

Nina Russi stages Vivaldi's pastiche as a gripping political thriller that also has a lot to say to us today and can hold up a mirror to our society.

As a central figure, Asteria is emblematic of all the women who today are active worldwide as individuals, activists, peace fighters, women's rights activists - some more radically, with world publicity, others in secret - against oppression, abuse of power and state violence. The opera thus becomes a hymn to solidarity, democracy and freedom of expression.

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Who doesn't sometimes dream of discovering a hidden door behind which a magical, completely different world opens up? Mark-Anthony Turnage's fantasy opera "Coraline," based on the bestseller by Neil Gaiman, tells the story of a courageous girl whose unusual name shows that not everything is always as it seems. In this very modern coming-of-age story, Coraline must realize that in a world where all wishes are granted, she would lose not only her eyes, but also her individual personality.

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Director Nina Russi receives the 2019 Götz Friedrich Prize for her Bernstein evening "Trouble in Tahiti" / "A Quiet Place" at Theater Aachen.

The Götz Friedrich Prize for the promotion of young talent recognizes outstanding achievements in musical theater. It was founded in 1995 by the legendary director and artistic director Götz Friedrich and is now supported by the German Opera Conference. The jury consists of the artistic directors Andreas Homoki (Zurich, chairman), Barrie Kosky (Komische Oper Berlin), Birgit Meyer (Cologne) and Christoph Meyer (Deutsche Oper am Rhein), as well as Bernd Feuchtner (management). Prize winners included Sebastian Baumgarten, Stefan Herheim, Benedikt von Peter, Elisabeth Stöppler, Yuval Sharon, Nadja Loschky, Mizgin Bilmen.

The award ceremony took place on 7 November 2019 as part of the German Opera Conference at the Stuttgart Opera.

The whole life in a house
"Nina Russi's production lives from the character direction and an extraordinary richness of detail, which, however, never puts itself before the story, but rather differentiates and enriches it, with many small, never meaningless and always supporting the narrative images and gestures. Remarkably imaginative and full of sparking wit is, for example, her treatment of the vocal alto and quartet, who act here like ironic mediators, suddenly bringing the scenic events into focus on several occasions with superb timing.

"A Quiet Place" for Nina Russi is obviously not that quiet garden Dinah dreams of, but the family home. That's why she also locates "Trouble in Tahiti," which from the scene directions is set in various places, exclusively within the house - magic realism as dream interpretation. That works, too, because Russi never chickened out, because she dares to interpret text and music in small ways, exposing the web of drives, feelings, thoughts and longings that brought about the characters' injuries and keeps them trapped inside."

Andreas Falentin, Die Deutsche Bühne

"The young director Nina Russi, together with her team of set designers (stage: Mathis Neidhardt, costumes: Annemarie Bulla), has devised a staging concept that intertwines the past and the present, and relates feelings from the past and the present in an almost tender way. (...) With such cross connections, which sometimes touch the heart, Nina Russi offers a very, very great directorial work. (...) Sometimes you think you are watching a film with all these image changes. In addition, there is a lively and psychologically explosive characterization. (...) The Aachen audience was visibly taken by all these optical charms. Justifiably stormy applause. (...) A visit to this production (it remains on the schedule until May) can only be strongly recommended."

Christoph Zimmermann, Online Merker - Die internationale Kulturplattform

Nina Russi directs a world premiere on the studio stage of the Zurich Opera House: Der Traum von Dir by Xavier Dayer (*1972). It is a commissioned work of the Zurich Opera, a chamber opera to a libretto by Claus Spahn based on the novella "Letter from an Unknown Person" by Stefan Zweig.

This world premiere marks the beginning of a series of works commissioned by the Zurich Opera from Swiss composers. From the Philharmonia Zurich, the Ensemble Opera Nova has been formed to devote itself to contemporary pieces in a chamber formation.

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