Conductor and Musical Director of the Opera Department, Theater Basel
“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; he knew how to keep orchestra and chorus coordinated and precise…”
-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, where his tenure has been marked by world premieres, standing ovations, and international co-productions, he now enters his most expansive artistic chapter.
Opera repertoire
Ades – Powder Her Face
Beethoven – Fidelio
Bellini – La Sonnambula
Benatzky – Im Weißen Rössl
Berg – Lulu, Wozzeck
Berio – La Vera Storia
Bernstein – Candide
Bizet – Carmen
Bizet – Les Pecheurs des Perles
Bock – Fiddler on the Roof
Britten – A Midsummernight´s Dream
Delibes – Lakmé
Donizetti – Don Pasquale, L´Elisir d´Amore, Lucia di Lammermoor
Dvorak – Rusalka
Gluck – Orfée et Euridice
Gounod – Faust
Händel – Alcina, Belshazzar, Jephtha
Händel – Rinaldo
Hartmann – Simplicius Simplicissimus
Henze – We come to the River
Hindemith – Cardillac, Trilogie* (Mord, Hoffnung der Frauen, Sancta Susanna,Das Nusch-Nuschi)
Humperdinck – Hänsel und Gretel
J. Strauss – Die Fledermaus
Janacek – Katja Kabanová
Kagel – Der Mündliche Verrat
Lortzing – Der Wildschütz
Massenet – Thaiis
Milhaud – À propos de bottes, Un peu d’exercice
Mozart – Cosí fan tutte, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, Idomeneo
La Finta Giardiniera, Le Nozze di Figaro, Die Zauberflöte
Poulenc – Dialogues des Carmelites
Prokofiev – Die Liebe zu den Drei Orangen
Puccini – La Bohème, Madame Butterfly, Tosca
Puccini – Manon Lescaut, Turandot
Rossini – Il Barbiere di Seviglia*, L´Italiana in Algeri
R. Strauss – Elektra, Der Rosenkavalier, Salome
Schleiermacher – Kokain
Schreker – Der Ferne Klang
Strawinsky – The Rake´s Progress
Tschaikowsky – Evgeny Onegin, Pique Dame
Verdi – Giovanna d´Arco
Verdi- Un Ballo in Maschera, Don Carlo, La Forza del
Destino, Otello, La Traviata, Rigoletto, Jerusalem
Vivaldi: Orlando
Wagner – Lohengrin, Parsifal,Tannhäuser
Wagner – Tristan und Isolde
Weber – Der Freischütz
Weill – Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny
Weill - Lady in the Dark
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