ROCC - BIOGRAPHY

Slovenian opera director, set and costume designer, dramaturge, performer, arts manager, and educator Rocc studied opera directing at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. He later pursued postgraduate studies in set design at Zurich University of the Arts and at the Offenbach University of Art and Design under the Stuttgart-based artist rosalie. He was awarded a scholarship by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and also received support from the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. The pseudonym Rocc is a tribute to Marie Mrázková, his acting teacher and an important mentor in life.

Rocc has created more than seventy opera productions for national theatres in Prague, Brno, Ostrava, Ljubljana, Riga, Bergen, Wrocław, and elsewhere. His work has been presented at a wide range of international festivals, including Festival Ljubljana, Janáček Brno, Moravian Autumn, OPERA festival in Prague, the Prague Quadrennial, Warsaw Autumn, the International Festival of Sacred Music in Pordenone, the ISCM World Music Days, the Bergen International Festival, Audio Art Festival Kraków, Composer’s Day in the Netherlands, and Exposition of New Music in Brno, among others. He has a particular affinity for contemporary opera and is the founder and artistic director of Opera eXperiment, a project dedicated to the aesthetics of contemporary and experimental music theatre.

In the 2007/2008 season, Rocc worked as dramaturg and assistant director at the Slovenian National Theatre in Maribor. The following season, he was appointed Deputy Artistic Director and Dramaturg of the Janáček Opera of the National Theatre Brno. From 2009 to 2011, he served as Artistic Director of the Janáček Opera and was also a member of the dramaturgical board of the Janáček Brno festival. Between 2011 and 2013, he was Artistic Director of the Prague State Opera, which merged with the National Theatre Opera in 2012. From 2013 to 2019, he was Artistic Director of the Opera of the Slovenian National Theatre Opera and Ballet in his native Ljubljana.

In 2018, Rocc received the Recognition of Major Works of Art, the highest artistic title awarded by the University of Ljubljana and equivalent to a doctoral degree. He is Associate Professor of Opera Performance at the Academy of Music of the University of Ljubljana and also teaches as a visiting lecturer in opera directing at the Faculty of Music of the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts in Brno. In addition, Rocc serves on expert juries for arts competitions.

He made his debut with NDM Opera in 2010, directing and designing the sets and costumes for a double bill of Janáček’s Šárka and Martinů’s Ariadne. He later created the direction, set design, and costume design for Wagner’s Lohengrin (2013), as well as the direction and set design for Smetana’s The Two Widows (2022) and Viktor Ullmann’s two one-act operas The Broken Jug and The Emperor of Atlantis, or Death’s Refusal (2023).

^{The artist is responsible for the accuracy and factual correctness of the information provided in this biography.}