Elke Neidhardt

Elke Cordelia Neidhardt AM (5 July 1941 – 25 November 2013) was a German-born actress and opera and theatre director. She spent most of her career after 1967 in Australia and became an Australian citizen in 2007. She appeared in theatre, television and feature films in Germany, Austria, France and Australia, and directed operas in Zurich, Amsterdam, Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg, Vienna, Cologne and Australia. She is best known in Australia for directing operas with Opera Australia, and most particularly for directing the first full modern Australian production of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, in Adelaide in 2004.

Elke Neidhardt was born in Stuttgart, on July 5, 1941, the youngest of three children to father, Karl (a physician, Latin scholar and intellectual) and mother, Vilma (also a doctor). At the age of three, Neidhardt survived an Allied bombardment in Ludwigsburg, which decimated her family's neighbouring home.

Following in the footsteps of her parents and brother, Neidhardt studied medicine at Berlin University for a year, but hated it, so her father sent her to a finishing school, to study deportment and domestic undertakings. Concurrently, she took private lessons in dramatic art (much to the disapproval of her mother), beginning the trajectory of her acting career. She then studied at the State University of Music and Performing Arts Stuttgart.

Neidhardt directed operas in Zurich, Amsterdam, Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg and Vienna. She also made two films in Germany Der Schatten: Ein Märchen für Erwachsene (1963) and the Jerry Cotton thriller Mordnacht in Manhattan (1965).

In 1963, Neidhardt moved to Vienna, where she landed numerous stage roles at Theater in der Josefstadt, and made regular appearances in film and television.

After meeting future husband Christopher Muir, an Australian director at the ABC, Neidhardt relocated to Melbourne, Australia. In 1967 she played Dr. Anna Steiner, a German doctor, in several episodes of the television series Skippy the Bush Kangaroo. Other Australian television appearances included The Link Men (1970) and Shannon's Mob (1975). She was also in a small number of Australian feature films, including Libido (1973) in which she appeared nude), Alvin Purple (1973) and The True Story of Eskimo Nell (1975). Her last film was Inside Looking Out (1977).

From 1977 to 1990 Neidhardt was the resident director for Opera Australia. She returned to Germany in 1990, after being headhunted for the role of principal resident director for Cologne State Opera (Oper der Stadt Koln). She worked there for six years, directing several operas including three productions of Richard Wagner's Ring Cycle, before again returning to Australia.

In 2001 Neidhardt directed the first fully staged Australian production of Wagner's Parsifal, for the State Opera of South Australia. In 2004 she directed the first full modern Australian production of the Ring Cycle, in Adelaide, which attracted worldwide critical acclaim and won several Helpmann Awards in 2005.

Other operas she directed in Australia or overseas included Don Giovanni, Tosca, La traviata, Salome, Werther, Fidelio, Lohengrin, Andrea Chénier, The Flying Dutchman, I puritani, La finta semplice, Il Trovatore and Tannhäuser. She also directed a touring production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream for the Bell Shakespeare Company. She lectured at NIDA and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. In 2006 she was a member of the judging panel for Operatunity Oz, along with Richard Gill, Yvonne Kenny and Antoinette Halloran.

Neidhardt had a reputation for clashing with the conductors she worked with. She was also known for her bluntness and frankness, describing Australian culture as "quite massively behind"; criticising the prudishness of theatrical authorities about things such as nudity; regarding the Sydney Opera House as "awful to work in"; and criticising the decision of arts minister Peter Garrett not to repeat her 2004 Adelaide production of the Ring Cycle despite its overwhelming success.

Neidhardt met future husband Christopher Muir, an Australian television director, in Munich in 1965, when he was studying European TV, films and theatre for the ABC. Originally they were to marry when Neidhardt first arrived in Australia in early 1966, but Muir contracted tuberculosis, so Neidhardt returned to Europe to resume her acting contracts until he recovered. She arrived back in Australia with plans to marry before Christmas, only to be hospitalised with appendicitis, so the wedding was postponed a second time. They eventually married in 1967, at 'Athanor', an old stone house, on a property in Narrewarren, outside Melbourne.

Neidhardt and Muir had a son, Fabian, before divorcing in 1977. Fabian Muir is now a Berlin-based photographer and writer.

Neidhardt subsequently had a 35-year relationship with Australian actor and musician Norman Kaye, nursing him through the final stages of Alzheimer's disease until his death in May 2007. He had frequently proposed marriage to her, but she always declined, feeling that marriage was unnecessary.

Neidhardt became an Australian citizen in early 2007. She was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in the Australia Day Honours 2011, "for service to the performing arts as an opera director and producer, and through the tuition and mentoring of young emerging artists".

She died on 25 November 2013, aged 72, three months after being diagnosed with cancer. Her death occurred during Neil Armfield's new staging of the Ring Cycle in Melbourne.