“The ingenuities of the Basel production would count for little were it not so well conducted ... Thomas Wise’s musical direction was idiomatic and pointed …”
David Savran, Kurt Weill Newsletter, Spring 2023, writing about Kurt Weill’s “Lady in the Dark” at Theater Basel
Thomas Wise is one of the most versatile musicians working in opera and music theatre today. A conductor whose artistic lineage runs from Bartók's last pupil at Juilliard to the freshly drying ink of world premieres, his collaborators include Philipp Stölzl, Barrie Kosky, Herbert Fritsch, and Antú Romero Nunes.
Trained at the Interlochen Arts Academy, the Juilliard School, the Cologne Musikhochschule, and in London, he commands a stylistic range that encompasses baroque opera, the core operatic repertoire, Weimar-era music theatre, and the most demanding new works of our time.
As Musical Director of Opera at Theater Basel since 2021, his tenure has been marked by world premieres and international co-productions.
opera repertoire
Adès – Powder Her Face
Beethoven – Fidelio
Bellini – La sonnambula
Benatzky – Im weißen Rössl
Benjamin – Written on Skin
Berg – Lulu, Wozzeck
Berio – La vera storia
Bernstein – Candide, West Side Story
Bizet – Carmen, Les pêcheurs de perles
Blow – Venus and Adonis
Bock – Fiddler on the Roof
Britten – A Midsummer Night's Dream
Delibes – Lakmé
Donizetti – Don Pasquale, L'elisir d'amore, Lucia di Lammermoor
Dvořák – Rusalka
Gluck – Orphée et Eurydice
Gounod – Faust
Händel – Acis and Galatea, Alcina, Belshazzar, Jephtha, Rinaldo
Hartmann – Simplicius Simplicissimus
Henze – We Come to the River
Hindemith – Cardillac, Trilogie (Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen / Das Nusch-Nuschi / Sancta Susanna)
Humperdinck – Hänsel und Gretel
Janáček – Káťa Kabanová
Kagel – Der mündliche Verrat
Korngold – Die tote Stadt
Lortzing – Der Wildschütz
Massenet – Thaïs
Milhaud – À propos de bottes, Un peu d'exercice
Mozart – Così fan tutte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, Idomeneo, La finta giardiniera, Le nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte
Poulenc – Dialogues des Carmélites
Prokofiev – Lyubov k tryom apelsinam (Die Liebe zu den drei Orangen)
Puccini – La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Tosca, Turandot
Rossini – Il barbiere di Siviglia, L'italiana in Algeri
Schleiermacher – Kokain
Schreker – Der ferne Klang
J. Strauss – Die Fledermaus
R. Strauss – Elektra, Intermezzo, Der Rosenkavalier, Salome
Stravinsky – The Rake's Progress
Tchaikovsky – Evgeny Onegin, Pikovaya dama
Verdi – Un ballo in maschera, Don Carlo, La forza del destino, Giovanna d'Arco, Jérusalem, Otello, Rigoletto, La traviata
Vivaldi – Orlando
Wagner – Der Ring des Nibelungen, Lohengrin, Parsifal, Tannhäuser, Tristan und Isolde
Weber – Der Freischütz
Weill – Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Die Dreigroschenoper, Lady in the Dark, Street Scene