rocafilm

The Austrian film-makers and video artists Carmen Zimmermann and Roland Horvath set up their production company rocafilm in 2010 to create videos for opera and plays and to make documentary films. In 2010 they collaborated with the director Damiano Michieletto for the first time on a production of La bohème at the Salzburg Festival, continuing this collaboration with Idomeneo at the Theater an der Wien, Falstaff and La Cenerentola at the Salzburg Festival in 2013 and 2014 respectively (with a revival of Falstaff at La Scala, Milan), Die Zauberflöte and the world premiere of Filippo Perocco’s Aquagranda (Premio Abbiati 2017 — Special Prize) at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Rigoletto at the Dutch National Opera, La Damnation de Faust at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome (Premio Abbiati 2018 for best production), Der ferne Klang at the Frankfurt Opera and Don Pasquale and Don Quichotte at the Paris Opéra.

Since 2018 rocafilm has worked regularly with Claus Guth. The world premiere of Michael Jarrell’s Bérénice in Paris was followed by Handel’s Orlando at the Theater an der Wien, the world premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s Heart Chamber at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Salome at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (with a revival at the Metropolitan Opera in New York), Jenůfa at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Georg Friedrich Haas’s Bluthaus as well as Semele and Die Liebe der Danae at the Bavarian State Opera, the world premiere of Pascal Dusapin’s Il Viaggio, Dante at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Doppelgänger at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, Turandot at the Vienna State Opera and Khovanshchina at the Berlin State Opera.

In 2024 rocafilm worked for the first time with Carrie Cracknell (Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera), Simon McBurney (Mnemonic at the National Theatre in London) and R. B. Schlather (Macbeth at the Frankfurt Opera).

At the Salzburg Festival rocafilm has also been responsible for video designs for productions by directors such as Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier (Giulio Cesare, 2012), Luc Bondy (Marc-André Dalbavie’s Charlotte Salomon, 2014), Robert Carsen (Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, 2021) and Rolando Villazón (Il barbiere di Siviglia, 2022). At the Salzburg Easter Festival the team has worked on Philipp Stölz’s production of Cavalleria rusticana / Pagliacci and on Die Walküre in a reconstruction of Günther Schneider-Siemssen’s legendary designs from 1967.

In autumn 2020 rocafilm was responsible for the overall conception and video for a production of Madama Butterfly at the National Theatre in Mannheim.

Carmen Zimmermann and Roland Horvath also work in spoken theatre, and are the authors and directors of two documentaries made in Asia: Between Days and Dreams (2011) and Sister Heart (2015).