Rocc

Artistic supervisor of opera

Rocc studied opera stage direction with Alena Vaňáková at the Janáček Academy of Music and Drama in Brno, a course which he followed up by postgraduate studies of stage design in Zurich, and with Rosalie in Offenbach am Main. He was granted a scholarship by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia, as well as receiving support from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

Early on in his career, he mounted productions of Pergolesi’s La serva padrona (1999), and Alessandro Scarlatti’s L’amor generoso (2002), both at the Janáček Academy’s Chamber Opera, and Ernst Toch’s fairy-tale opera Die Prinzessin auf der Erbse. After subsequent successful productions, in Brno, in 2004, of Josef Berg’s chamber operas, Euphrides in front of the Tymen Gates and Breakfast at the Schlankenwald Castle, he was commissioned by the National Theatre in Prague to stage the world premiere of the opera MrTVÁ? by Markéta Dvořáková and Ivo Medek. In 2007, this production was presented at the 50th Warsaw Autumn International Festival of Contemporary Music.

During the 2005/2006 season, he lectured on stage movement at singing workshops in Freyung, Germany, where he also staged Albert Lortzing’s comic opera Die Opernprobe, and Franz Schubert’s singspiel Die Verschworenen/Der häusliche Krieg. In 2005, he mounted the world premiere of Vít Zouhar’s minimalist opera The Days of the Nights, at the National Theatre in Brno. In 2007, he staged the world premiere, at the National Theatre in Prague, of Tomáš Hanzlík’s opera Lacrimae Alexandri Magni.

Figuring among Rocc’s many other projects are installations, dance productions and new media works (in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany), as well as set designs for the Leipziger Tanztheater. Rocc is the initiator of “postopera forma,” a concept focused on post-dramatic music and stage aesthetics. His further projects have included e.g. productions of Michal Košut’s opera Macbeth for the Moravian Autumn Festival in Brno, in 2008, or Haydn’s Der Apotheker in Ljubljana, in 2009.

In the 2007/2008 season, he held the post of Dramaturge in the Opera of the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor, and the 2008/2009 season saw him as deputy Artistic Director of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre in Brno, where his achievements included, among others, a joint project with Vít Zouhar and Tomáš Hanzlík, La Dafne.

Since the 2011/2012 season, he has been Artistic Director of the opera ensemble of the Prague State Opera, a position which will be combined as from January 1, 2012 with the post of Artistic Director of the National Theatre in Prague opera company.