Eva Buchmann

The director and artistic leader of Punto Arte and the annual Punto Arte Festival, Eva Buchmann, creates opera productions that are developed in Tuscany and then travel across the globe. Her work is rooted in the thoughtful simplicity of traveling stages and the tradition of Commedia dell’arte.

With experience at major venues such as the Stanislavski Theatre in Moscow, Eva Buchmann has made it her mission to explore new performance spaces. Cleverly reduced to the essentials, she brings the magic of grand opera to opera houses, concert halls, factories, palaces, hotels, and warehouses with small-scale productions across the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, the USA, and at festivals in Carmel, Malta, St. Moritz, Leipzig, and Amsterdam.

Recent productions include Haydn’s wanderlust-filled apothecary opera Lo speziale staged in a tiny Fiat Cinquecento that doubles as a self-contained set, as well as Ludmilla, an opera parody by Erich Ziegler composed in the Westerbork transit camp, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Rossini’s La scala di seta.

Her upcoming performances will take her to the Ludwigsburg Castle Festival in 2026 with Lo speziale, to the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich with La scala di seta, and to the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra with Fidelio.

Her repertoire includes many operas from the 17th and 18th centuries, as well as works by Verdi, Donizetti, Mascagni, Stravinsky, and Frid. Further productions include: Handel’s Alcina (Nikkikai Opera Tokyo, Japan), Handel’s Semele (Teatr Wielki Łódź, Poland), Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Piccolo Festival d’Udine, Italy, and Rijeka National Theatre, Croatia), Der Schauspieldirektor/Mozart with the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, The Snow Queen/Hefti and Der Schauspieldirektor/Mozart with the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.

Videos


Ludmilla (Ziegler)
Marc Pantus (Bariton)
Merlijn Runia (Mezzosopran)
Jan Willem Baljet (Bariton)
Eva Buchmann (stage director)
Wilminktheater (The Netherlands)
(04/05/2022)


Haydn: Lo Speziale (Der Apotheker)
Piotr Micinski (Sempronio)
Marina Zyatkova (Sopran)
Álvaro Zambrano (Mengone)
Virpi Räisänen (Volpino)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Eva Buchmann (stage director)
hr- Sinfonieorchester
hr-Sendesaal (05+06/12/19)


Haydn: Lo Speziale
Marina Zyatkova (Grilleta)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Eva Buchmann (stage director)
Orquesta Simfonica de Barcelona i
Nacional de Catalunya (OBC)
Sala Gran (Barcelona)
(18-20/01/2018)


Mozart: Don Giovanni
Duncan Rock (Don Giovanni)
Jaco Huijpen (Commendatore)
Renate Arends (Elvira)
Piotr Micinski (Leporello)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Eva Buchmann (stage director)
Orquesta Simfònica de Barcelona i
HET Symfonieorkest
Theater Carré (Amsterdam)
(01/2015)


Orlando
Haydn: Orlando – Ausschnitte Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Eva Buchmann (stage director)
Combatimiento Consort Amsterdam
Odeon De Spiegel Theaters
(01/06/2011)


Händel: Agripina, Act II “Alle Tue
Piante”

Annemarie Kremer (Agrippina)
Renate Arends (Poppea)
Michael Hart-Davis (Nerone)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Eva Buchmann (stage director)
Combatimmiento Consort Amsterdam
Slovak National Theatre
(22+23/10/2004)


Punto Arte Festival 2024
After Movie
Volterra (Italien)
(01-04/07/2025)

Next Concerts
2025-07-0719:30Punto Arte Festival 2025 (Opera La scala di seta)Punto Arte
2025-07-1019:30Punto Arte Festival 2025 (Opera La scala di seta)Punto Arte
Photo Gallery
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Rita (Donizetti)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Punto Arte festival (2022)
zoom image Photo: Domenico Innocenzi
Download available

8256 x 5504 pixels – 27.53 MB

Ludmilla (Ziegler)
Wilminktheater (The Netherlands)
(04.05.2022)
Download available

1600 x 1066 pixels – 815.61 KB

Le Nozze di Figaro (Mozart)
Stefano Rabaglia (conductor)
Croatian National Theatre (2019)
Download available

5184 x 3456 pixels – 5.51 MB

Lo Speziale (Haydn)
Jan WiIllem de Vriend (conductor)
Punto Arte festival (2018)
Photo: Judit Napjus
Download available

960 x 610 pixels – 66.65 KB

Semele (Händel)
Marcin Wolniewski (conductor)
Orchestra and Choir of the Academy of Music in Lódz
Theater Wielki Lodz (2017)
Photo: Joanna Miklaszewska
Download available

1536 x 1024 pixels – 354.84 KB

Orlando (Händel)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Combattimento Consort Amsterdam
(2011)
Photo: Leo van Velzen
Download available

934 x 623 pixels – 355.05 KB

Orlando (Händel)
Jan Willem de Vriend (conductor)
Combattimento Consort Amsterdam
(2011)
Photo: Leo van Velzen
Download available

Biography

Perceptive, inventive and involving, the productions of opera director Eva Buchmann are responsive to the scale and nature of their environment. Whether conceived for a specific opera house or concert hall, or for touring a diversity of venues, her stagings resonate with immediacy and authenticity.

Scrupulous in her interpretation of both the libretto and the score, Buchmann takes a thoughtful, fresh approach, whether dealing with mainstream repertoire, the revival of a rare work, or a world premiere. Her insights derive not only from her experience in music theatre around the world, but from her professional training as a cellist, psychologist and music therapist.

Two Punto Arte Festival productions that have toured extensively in Europe are Haydn’s Comedy Lo speziale, in which a Fiat 500 is used as part of the stage set and also for storing sets and props, and Erich Ziegler’s Ludmilla, a cabaret-inspired satire from 1944: rediscovered in 2016, it was created during the Jewish composer’s internment in the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands. In 2023, Lo speziale (already seen in such cities as Zurich with Tonhalle Orchester, Frankfurt with the Radio Symphony Orchestra (HR), Barcelona with Orchestra Simfònica de Barcelona i National de Catalunya and on tour with Kölner Kammerochester) visits Trondheim. Ludmilla, touring the Netherlands in 2023, will travel in March 2024 to the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas for its US premiere with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

Eva Buchmann ’s collaborations around Europe with Jan Willem de Vriend include: Don Giovanni (Amsterdam, Basel, St. Moritz), the Singspiel partially attributed to Mozart Der Stein der Weisen (Łódź, Belgium and the Netherlands), Rossinis La Gazzetta (Basel, St. Moritz with the Netherlands Symphony Orchestra), Haydn Il mondo della luna (Łódź and Trondheim with Trondheim Symfonie Orkest & Opera), Händel’s Agrippina (on a tour starting from the Netherlands under the patronage of the Dutch government through the capitals of the European candidate countries Prague, Bratislava, Ljubljana, Budapest and Warsaw with the Combattimento Consort Amsterdam) and Orlando; Bibers Arminio, Salieris Prima la musica, Telemanns Pimpinone und Johann Sebastian Bachs Jagd- und Kaffee-Kantaten at the Leipziger Bachfest.

Her other baroque and classical opera productions include Händel’s Alcina at the Nikikai Opera in Tokyo (2018) and Semele at the Teatr Wielki in Łódź (2017), Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro at the Croatian National Theater Rijeka and in Italy (2018) as well as Così fan tutte for the Kraków Opera and the acting director for the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.

She subsequently brought works by Verdi (La traviata), Rossini (La Cenerentola), Donizetti (Anna Bolena und Rita), Weber (Abu Hassan), Johann Strauss (Die Fledermaus), Mascagni (Cavalleria rusticana), Strawinsky (Mavra) und Géza Frid (Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank) to the stage. In 2018, on behalf of the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich, she staged the premiere of David Philip Hefti’s The Snow Queen, a musical story inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s work, for its 150th anniversary.

Her work also includes productions at Moscow’s Stanislavsky Theater and at festivals in Carmel (USA), Malta, St. Moritz, Udine and Amsterdam. Born and educated in Switzerland, Eva Buchmann now lives in Amsterdam. She is a guest lecturer in stage directing at the Łódź Academy of Music.

2025/2026
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