Isabel Karajan (born 25 June 1960 in Vienna) is an Austrian actress. She is a daughter of Herbert von Karajan and Eliette von Karajan.
After completing her Matura, Isabel Karajan studied acting in Vienna and Paris. She had her first acting engagements with the playhouses in Zurich and Stuttgart, the Thalia theatre Hamburg, the theatre Der Kreis in Vienna and the Théâtre National de la Colline. From 1995 to 1998 Isabel Karajan played the part of the Good Works in Jedermann at the Salzburg Festival. She also performed in Avignon and Adelaide, Australia, as well as at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Schauspielhaus Stuttgart, the Münchner Kammerspiele and at the Schaubühne in Berlin. In 2000, she appeared in Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher by Arthur Honegger at the Saito-Kinen Festival in Japan. It's the extraordinary projects that are close to Isabel Karajan's heart. She has been developing her own projects for solo theatrical performances, chamber music or large orchestra with directors such as Klaus Ortner, Jorge Lavelli, Julian Pölsler, Christina Pfrötschner and others for several years. At the Shostakovich Days in Gohrisch, the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Diaghilev Festival of Currentzis in Perm, the Soli Deo Gloria Festival in Goslar and the Kfar Blum Festival in Israel, she presented "Miss Death meets Mr. Shostakovich ", a scenic collage on fear with chamber music by Shostakovich and texts by his contemporaries. Together with members of the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, she appeared on stage in Stravinsky's "The Story of the Soldier" and also played "Eight Songs for a Mad King" by Peter Maxwell Davies. At the Saito-Kinen Festival in Japan, she appeared as "Jeanne d`Arc au bûcher" by Arthur Honegger. In 2015, under the direction of Julian Pölsler, "Die Feuerprobe" with poems by Christine Lavant and Op. 40 by Shostakovich. Furthermore, Isabel Karajan, in collaboration with the director Christina Pfrötschner, created a word music collage for the Midsummer Night's Dream.
In 2016, Isabel Karajan starred in Bernstein's "Candide" with the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Jeffrey Tate. This was followed in 2017 by Edgar A. Poe's "The Mask of the Red Death" at the Swiss Alp Classic Festival in Andermatt with Clemens Hellsberg and members of the Vienna Philharmonic. In the summer of 2018 she performed with the composer Beat Furrer at the Salzburg Festival with an interpretation of the "Wüstenbuch" fragment by Ingeborg Bachmann. As leading actress she was involved in the development and successful premiere of the opera "Stillhang" by Christian Spitzenstätter in December 2018 under the direction of Klaus Ortner. Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" in the version by F. Mendelssohn Bartholdy described her from the point of view of an orchestra violist together with the Staatskapelle Dresden and the conductor Vladimir Jurowski in three concert evenings in the Semper Oper Dresden in 2019. ...
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