2022/23 New Leadership Team at Leipzig Opera

Tobias Wolff

Tobias Wolff takes over the direction at the Oper Leipzig starting with the 2022/23 season.

After his music degree at trinity College, Cambridge, 1998, Tobias Wolff studied viola at the Folkwang Universität der Künste Essen and at the Robert-Schumann Hochschule Düsseldorf until 2002. His first professional engagements were at the International Beethoven Festival in Bonn, and at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. He lives in Leipzig since 2002, where he has worked as a freelance musician, concert agent, and music journalist, including assignments for the Leipziger Volkszeitung, MDR Kultur, and others.

Beginning in 2006, Wolff worked as Head Artistic Advisorand and Marketing Director at the Theater Altenburg-Gera. During the 2010/11 season, he took on the position of Administrative Director and led the theatre successfully through a period of crisis. At the same time, he completed a management course at HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management in 2011, earning an international MBA. In the same year, he was appointed managing director of the Göttingen International Handel Festival, one of the oldest festivals for Baroque music worldwide. He repositioned the festival internationally, introduced unconventional formats, and strategically promoted young talent while prioritizing music education and communication. For his efforts, the festival was the recipient of two Helpmann Awards, the Förderpreis Musikvermittlung des Musiklandes Niedersachsen, and EU funding for “eeemerging,” a scholarship programme he co-initiated. In the exceptional Corona year of 2020, Tobias Wolff was involved in cultural politics as co-founder and spokesperson for the Forum Musik Festival, an association of over 100 festival organisations from all over Germany. The Göttingen International Handel Festival 2020 – which has been postponed to September 2021 – will mark the festival’s centenary.

Dr. Cornelia Preissinger

Cornelia Preissinger will join the leadership team of Tobias Wolff at Leipzig Opera House as Opera Director and Deputy Intendant, starting with the 2022/23 season.

Cornelia Preissinger studied Musicology, Theatre Studies, and Modern German Literature at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. Her Master’s thesis at the LMU was awarded the Encouragement Award for Young Scholars from the Richard-Strauss-Gesellschaft Munich in 1989. She completed her PhD in 1993, writing about Johannes Brahms’ vocal and instrumental principles of design in Vier ernste Gesänge Opus 121 – supported by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Free State of Bavaria.

Her professional history includes posts as opera director, artistic planner, and dramaturge at opera houses including the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, the Landestheater Linz, the Staatstheater Kassel, and, until 2019, Deputy Intendant at the Hanover State Opera. As a dramaturge, she oversaw a number of new productions and world premieres, accompanied chamber music series, and initiated new education projects for children and adults. Preissinger is also known in the music world as an author of a variety of trade articles, as well as for her lectures on musicology and music history. She volunteers as a member of the jury and as leader of the “Komponistinnen nach Frankfurt” competition, a concert series from the internationally active research center Archiv Frau und Musik. She was also a member of the board of trustees of Freie Szene Düsseldorf, the association that represents the city’s independent theatre scene.

Marlene Hahn

Marlene Hahn will join new Intendant Tobias Wolff’s leadership team at the Leipzig Opera House as Head Dramaturge, starting with the 2022/23 season.

Marlene Hahn completed her studies at the Universität Augsburg, where she received degrees in German, Art History, and in the elite interdisciplinary course Ethics of Textual Cultures. She had previously worked for a year in New York City in marketing and sales management. During her multiple degree program, she worked for the annual Brechtfestival in Augsburg, as well as the Mozartfest in Würzburg. She also served as director’s assistant for a variety of opera productions. One year before completing her double degree program, she undertook a full-time position in the fall of 2010 at the Augsburg State Theatre as dramaturge for music theatre and concerts. She was awarded the Augsburg Theatre Award in 2015. She also artistically directed the Augsburg Opera Ball from 2012 to 2016.

Marlene Hahn has been a dramaturge at the Oper Graz since 2015. During her time there, she has also written her own pieces and took over the stage direction. She led the 2017 production of Hotel Elefant, an operatic collage about Graz’s cultural history. In 2021, she staged a production of Harrison Birtwistle’s modern opera The Corridor. She has also written education programmes of several composers for children’s concerts, which were successfully produced in Augsburg, Graz, and, during the 2020 Beethoven anniversary celebrations, to Bonn. She was named a Richard-Wagner-Scholar by the Wagner Forum Graz in 2017. Hahn is also the founder and moderator of the “Klappe auf!” video series produced by the Oper Graz, and artistic director of the Grazer Opernredoute’s Midnight Show.

Christoph Gedschold

Christoph Gedschold has been Kapellmeister at the Leipzig Opera since the 2015/16 season, and will take up the position of Music Director as part of new leadership team of Tobias Wolff 2022.

Already during his piano and conducting studies in Leipzig und Hamburg, Gedschold was répétiteur for the International Opera Studio of the Zurich Opera House. He was named Kapellmeister and répétiteur in 2002 at Theater Luzern, and worked for Claudio Abbado, Mariss Janssons, and Pierre Boulez, among others, at the Lucerne Festival. In 2005 he assisted Ulf Schirmer at the Bregenz Festival, and in the same year began at Nuremberg State Theatre. He was named First Kapellmeister at Karlsruhe State Theatre in 2009. He joined Leipzig Opera in the 2015/16 season, and has since led the premieres of Freischütz, Bluebeard’s Castle, Rusalka, The Bartered Bride, Pagliacci, and many others. Since 2015, he has also conducted regularly as a guest at Germany’s leading opera houses. He led the premiere of Die Passagierin by Mieczysław Weinberg at the Semperoper Dresden and at Oper Frankfurt, and helmed Rusalka and The Magic Flute in Cologne. He led the premiere of Götterdämmerung at the Opera de Oviedo, Spain. He also took over repertoire performances of Simon Boccanegra, La Traviata, Katja Kabanova, Manon Lescaut, and Die tote Stadt at the State Opera Hamburg, Ariadne auf Naxos in Frankfurt, Turandot in Cologne, and made appearances at the Semperoper in Dresden.

In addition to regular cooperation with the Gewandhausorchester, Christoph Gedschold conducted the Staatskapelle Dresden, the Hamburg Philharmoniker, the MDR Sinfonieorchester, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie Saarbrücken and the Gürzenich Orchester in Cologne. Further guest appearances have taken him to the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal, Sinfonieorchester Basel, and to the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo. Under Gedschold’s direction, and in cooperation with BR Klassik, the Munich Radio Orchestra presented a CD recording of Georg Schumann’s “Preis-Symphonie.”