SLÁVA DAUBNEROVÁ
Theatre & Opera Director
Sláva Daubnerová is a theatre and opera director whose performance practice remains the DNA of her directing. It shapes a bold visual, physical and cinematic language in which music, image and contemporary perspectives meet.
SELECTED WORK
DAS RHEINGOLD
National Theatre Prague · 2026
LA TRAVIATA
Teatro dell’Opera di Roma · 2025
LA FORZA DEL DESTINO
Aalto-Musiktheater Essen · 2024
MELANCHOLIA
Royal Swedish Opera, Stockholm · 2023
SALOME
Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe · 2022
LOLITA
National Theatre Prague / Mariinsky Theatre, Saint Petersburg · 2019–2020
ABOUT
Sláva Daubnerová is a Slovak theatre and opera director whose work brings together contemporary visual language, strong dramaturgical thinking and a distinctly physical, cinematic approach to musical theatre. Her productions place canonical works in dialogue with contemporary questions of power, violence, vulnerability, identity and female experience, without treating the repertoire as a museum piece.
Her artistic language grew out of a pioneering career in performance. As an independent artist, author and performer, she introduced experimental, multimedia and documentary forms into the Slovak theatre landscape and developed a distinctive body of work centred on female identity and the lives of overlooked women artists. Her performances on Louise Bourgeois, Magda Husáková-Lokvencová and Francesca Woodman became important reference points in the development of performance art in Slovakia. Her work was recognised with the Tatra banka Foundation Award for Art, the Crystal Wing Award and the Slovak Minister of Culture’s Prize. In 2020, with Masterpiece, she concluded her career as a performer and moved fully into theatre and opera directing.
Since then, Daubnerová has built an international directing practice spanning opera and drama. Her theatre productions include work at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and Landestheater Niederösterreich, while her opera work has taken her to the National Theatre Prague, Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm, Staatstheater Kassel, Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Aalto-Musiktheater Essen and Teatro dell’Opera di Roma.
Prague has been a central artistic relationship throughout her opera career. She has directed across all four opera venues of the National Theatre Prague — the National Theatre, Estates Theatre, State Opera and New Stage — working across a wide repertoire including Shostakovich, Gounod, Janáček and Shchedrin. Her long-term collaboration with Prague culminated in Wagner’s Das Rheingold, which she directed in 2026 as the opening production of a planned Ring des Nibelungen cycle.
Her production of Shchedrin’s Lolita, created in Prague in 2019, was subsequently transferred to the Mariinsky Theatre, where it premiered under Valery Gergiev in 2020 and was nominated for the Golden Mask. At the Royal Swedish Opera, she directed the world premiere of Mikael Karlsson’s Melancholia, based on Lars von Trier’s film; the resulting audiovisual production received a Special Mention for Extraordinary Artistic Achievement at Golden Prague and was nominated for the Rose d’Or. In 2025, she made her Italian debut at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma with La traviata.
Her performance practice remains the DNA of her directing. It shapes the way she works with the body, constructs images, uses film and multimedia, and approaches classical repertoire from unexpected perspectives. Rather than illustrating the score, she creates theatrical worlds in which music, image, physicality and contemporary social questions become part of the same dramaturgical language.
Across her opera productions, Daubnerová is interested in what happens when familiar repertoire is viewed from an unexpected perspective — when psychological, social and gender dimensions become part of the musical drama itself. Her work moves between opera, theatre, performance, film and visual art, creating a directing language that is contemporary in form while remaining deeply engaged with the repertoire.
AWARDS AND NOMINATIONS
The Crystal Wing Award 2021 in the theater category and audiovisual art for her the author’s production of Masterpiece.
Tatra banka Foundation Award for Art 2021 for directing, script and performance in her production Masterpiece.
Slovakian Minister of Culture's Prize for 2020 for exceptional contribution in the field of contemporary theater and dance with reference to the extraordinary works Masterpiece and Lolita.
Nominated for a Golden Mask 2020/2021 Award for Best Opera Production for her production of Lolita at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
Dosky Award for Best Production of 2013 for her production of Untitled.
Tatra Banka Arts Foundation in 2013 in the Young Maker category for her direction and performance in Untitled.
Dosky Award for Discovery of the Season in 2010 for her production of M.H.L.
Special Jury Award at the Nová Dráma/New Drama Festival in 2007 for direction and set design concept of Cells.
STUDIES
Jana Wild: Daubnerová’s Ninth
Andrej Samuel Čermák: Lonely Lamentations: Feminisms in Slovak Performance Through the Work of Sláva Daubnerová
Katarína K. Cvečková: Sláva Daubnerová and her Path to her Masterpiece
Soňa Šimková: The original route of Sláva Daubnerová or the magic of theatre Ingenious way
Dagmar Podmaková: Theatrical documentary of performance art