Music theatre has never stopped speaking to us. What changes is the way we listen.

Black and white portrait of opera director Lilli Fischer

Every generation encounters music theatre works with different experiences, different questions, a different understanding of the world. Every production is a chance to look at the present through stories from the past and the questions we ask of a work always reveal something about the society asking them.

Whenever I work on a piece, I ask myself: why does a person act the way they do?

I am not interested in heroes and villains, but in people. In the contradictions they carry, the roles they perform for others, and the moments when those roles begin to fall apart.

ARTISTIC STATEMENT

Music is at the centre of that search. It often reveals what a character cannot yet say, and it shapes relationships: a shift in rhythm, harmony or tension can turn proximity into distance, intimacy into conflict, confidence into vulnerability. Music sustains emotion, prolongs conflict, and makes inner experience physically tangible. At the same time, it has the power to seduce, to persuade, even to mislead. I am less interested in following the music unquestioningly than in the tension between what we hear, what we see, and what a character is trying to hide.

This is where my work as a director begins. Not by finding answers, but by asking more questions. It is why the rehearsal room matters so much to me: a place of shared discovery, where ideas are tested, challenged and transformed together with the singers.

My goal is to create encounters with people in whom we can recognise ourselves. If someone leaves the theatre thinking, "That was about me. That was about us," music theatre has fulfilled its greatest potential.

Background

I grew up in Vienna in a family where music was part of everyday life. My father was a violinist with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and my mother was a singer in the chorus of the Vienna State Opera. Music shaped the way I experienced the world from an early age.

Early years

First spark

The production that first drew me to music theatre was West Side Story on the Seebühne in Bregenz 2004, directed by Francesca Zambello. I was fascinated not by the idea of how music and theatre came together to tell a story.

Studies & First Works

That curiosity led me to study Theatre, Film and Media Studies alongside Musicology at the University of Vienna, while working as a freelance director's assistant and stage manager. I created my first productions with the Mozart Boys' Choir during this time.

In 2015, this path brought me to the Vienna State Opera, where I worked for eight years as a staff and revival director. It was there that I gained the practical experience that shaped me as a director.

Working with directors including Laurent Pelly, Simon Stone, Kirill Serebrennikov and David McVicar exposed me to very different artistic approaches. Directing revivals of productions such as Der Rosenkavalier (Otto Schenk), Don Pasquale (Irina Brook) and Lohengrin (Andreas Homoki) taught me what directing means in practice: how to translate an existing artistic vision into the rehearsal room, while remaining attentive to the individual artists who bring it to life.

What I particularly value about revivals is this process of discovery. A production may have been created years before, but every new cast brings different personalities, questions and possibilities. For me, reviving a production is therefore never simply about reproducing what has been done before. It is about working with the singers to discover what is already present in the staging, while finding new and personal approaches to their characters, creating clear points of reference that allow each singer to make the role their own.

2015 – 2023

In 2023, I became a freelancer. I continued to work as a freelance assistant director for Dmitri Tcherniakov, across productions in Berlin, Aix-en-Provence and Naples. Working closely within his rehearsal process and across different houses and repertoire deepened my interest in psychological storytelling and in the relationship between music and dramatic action, while giving me the space to develop my own artistic voice.

The years at the Vienna State Opera taught me how opera is made. Becoming freelancer was the moment I began asking myself how I wanted to make it.