John Neumeier, choreographer

Major partners of the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

Major partners of
the Paris Opera’s 350th anniversary

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Abbé Perrin (Director of...

Portrait

Directors, ballet masters, stage directors, choreographers, architects, ... Octave discovers the personalities that have marked the history of the Opera which continues to attract the great names of music and dance.

John Neumeier was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1939. He studied dance in his home city, then in Copenhagen and at the Royal Ballet School in London. In 1963, he was hired by John Cranko at the Stuttgart Ballet, where he created his first choreographic works. He went on to become the director of the Frankfurt Ballet in 1969. Neumeier likes to reinterpret the great classical ballets but he also has a passion for legendary stories and characters, including The Lady of the Camellias (1978), which entered the Paris Opera Ballet’s repertoire in 2006. The music of Bach and Mozart has a special place in his choreographic research, however, there can be little doubt that his most profound undertakings involve his exploration of the works of Gustav Mahler. In 1973, he was appointed director and chief choreographer of the Hamburg Ballet where he also ran the Ballet School which he created there in 1978. Many of the Hamburg Ballet’s activities including the Ballet Days Festival and the Nijinsky Gala, have become major events on the international calendar. In 1996, John Neumeier was made Intendant of the Hamburg Ballet. A Choreographer invited to theatres the world over, he has created and passed on some major works to the Paris Opera Ballet and its Ballet School: Vaslav (1980), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1982), Magnificat (1987), Spring and Fall (1991 and then 2018 for the Ballet School’s repertoire), The Nutcracker (1993), Sylvia (world premiere, 1997), Yondering (Ballet School world premiere, 1999), The Lady of the Camellias (2006), Gustav Mahler’s Third Symphony (2009), and Song of the Earth (2015).