Johannes Erath

First he studied violin with Rainer Küchl at der University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna and with Hansheinz Schneeberger in Freiburg.

Among the early productions of Erath were mostly operas by contemporary composers — i.e. the world premiere of Jörn Arnecke's Drei Helden in Rheinsberg, Gerhard Schedl's Triptychon, Dieter Kaufmann's Fuge Unfug-e, Elliott Carters What Next?

Thereafter he was also asked to direct classical repertory such as Un ballo in maschera in Bremerhaven, Les contes d’Hoffmann and Cendrillon am Stadttheater Bern, Orfeo ed Euridice und Aida at the Oper Köln, Eugene Onegin in Mainz, La traviata and The Cunning Little Vixen at the Hamburg State Opera.

In Graz Erath directed Alban Berg's Lulu and Mozart's Don Giovanni (both 2010), Elektra by Hugo von Hofmannsthal und Richard Strauss (2012), Wagner's Lohengrin (2013) and Korngold's Die tote Stadt (2015).

Vienna's Kurier praised the direction as ″poetic, visually stunning and partially fairytale like.″[1] The costumes for this production were designed by French couturier Christian Lacroix with whom Erath had already created Aida in Cologne.

In the main opera house he presented Verdi's Otello in 2011, Händel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto in 2012 and Carl Maria von Weber's Euryanthe in April 2015.

[2] kultiversum reported that Erath „placed the action in three historic settings: Firstly on a stylized wooden pedestal the archaic world of Commedia dell’Arte bringing into remembrance that Da Ponte based his personalities on this ancient typology.

[...] Hereby he unveiled his talent for bringing alive the roles with an accurate psychological understanding of their personalities — and this can not be taken for granted nowadays.