Nimrod Opera Zurich specialises in performing contemporary
opera internationally.

 
Nimrod Opera Zurich began in November 2000 by creating a new production of Thomas Adès'  remarkable opera “Powder her Face” for the "Music Harvest / Musikhøst" Festival in Odense, Denmark.
This production was then invited by the ISRAEL CONTEMPORARY PLAYERS to perform in the series “Great Musicians” at the Tel-Aviv Opera in February 2001. The Jerusalem Post declared this performance "Just superb!" and the Ha'aretz Daily Newspaper called it "Simply thrilling".

At the Music Biennale Zagreb in April 2001 “Powder her Face” was acclaimed by the Zagreb press as the best of all five music theatre productions in the 2001 Biennale. The strength of the cast and the communicative staging, placing the drama of the characters portrayed in the foreground, allowed the musical score to speak most clearly.

The Nimrod Opera Zurich production of “Powder her Face” at the Chicago Humanities Festival in November 2001 was the first professional staged performance of Adès opera in the US. "Major impact with minimal resources" was the tenor of an appreciative press.

In November 2002, Nimrod Opera Zurich completed an extensive tour of Thomas Adès' opera giving the Swiss premiere at Theater Winterthur in collaboration with the Solisti dell' Accademia Filarmonica Romana. Received as an "impressive portrait of a forceful lady", the production was praised for its "uncluttered, fast, uncomplicated and physical staging".

In Rome's Teatro Olimpico, Nimrod Opera Zurich gave the Italian premiere of Powder her Face in 2002 and for the Teatro di San Carlo, six performances in Naples. The press greatly appreciated the "unusually high level of musical theatrical tension" of the performances and London's OPERA magazine (August 2003) reported how the "uninhibited production went down well with the local public".
 
In 2005 Nimrod Opera Zurich created a new production of Mark-Anthony Turnage's "GREEK" giving the enthusiastically received Swiss premiere at Theater Winterthur in collaboration with the Musikkollegium Orchestra Winterthur.
 
At the Music Biennale Zagreb in 2005 and as part of the festival of World Music Days, the first scenic realisation of Diotima e Euridice by the Italian composer Nicola Sani was created and premiered by Nimrod Opera Zurich. The production was based on the electronic score created for Deutschland Radio Berlin realised in association with the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.

For the Kurt Weill-Fest Dessau 2007 Nimrod Opera Zurich created a programme in collaboration with participants from the Portland State University vocal institute Bel Canto Northwest in Portland, Oregon USA in July 2006.

12 young professional singers came to Europe and performed the programme of Hindemith's "Hin und zurück", Milhaud’s “Alissa” and Kurt Weill's "Down in the Valley" in Dessau and Berlin.
 
In 2007 the company created a visualisation of Morton Feldman’s epic opera Neither as closing event of the Ostrava Days Festival, Czech Republic.

In 2009 Nimrod Opera Zurich created a new visualized production of Michael Jarrell's "Cassandra" for Actress and Ensemble for the "Reduta" Theatre in Brno CZ. This production of Cassandra was invited to the distinguished Berlin Festival “MaerzMusik” where the sold-out production was acclaimed a highlight of the 2013 programme.

The production was then invited to give two performances in the Ballroom of the Bohemian National Hall, at the Czech Center in New York on February 6th & 7th 2014.

These well-attended performances were also appreciated by the critics who praised the production saying, “these would been the music and the pictures he (Schoenberg) would have died for.”

The production was then scheduled for the Lugo Opera Festival near Bologna, Italy in for a performance on 6th May 2014 and afterwards in the subscription series at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna on the 31st October and 2nd November 2014.

The audience and critics were impressed by the drama the production created and appreciated the interpretative presentation of the content of the epic recitation.

The production is presently invited to feature in the Israel Contemporary Players’ 2015/2016 season – 25th anniversary - programme in the Tel-Aviv Museum of Modern Art.

Future productions will include a new staging in the 2016 season programme of the opera “Medea material” by French composer, Pascal Dusapin – based on the text by the East German writer, Heiner Müller and other revivals and creations under discussion.
 
February 2015.