Corina van Eijk, artistic director, director, producer and teacher graduated from the directing department of the Toneelacademie in Maastricht at the age of 21. After completing her studies, she acted for a season on the Dutch theater circuit, including in a play based on a book by Julio Cortazar, before turning entirely to directing.



Opera in the backyard
Corina van Eijk taught drama to the vocal students of the Utrecht Conservatory. There she directed her first opera, Mozart's Der Schauspieldirector. She assisted Nuria Espert at the Brussels La Monnaie (with Dame Gwyneth Jones as Elektra) and Dietrich Hilsdorf with Aida at the German Aalto-Theater in Essen. Meanwhile, in her own hometown of Spanga, she had founded “Stichting Spanga the Verona of Weststellingwerf. She directed the first opera in Spanga in her own backyard: L'Elisir D'Amore by Donizetti (1989). The first series of open-air performances sold out immediately due to word of mouth and some excellent reviews. The company moved to the meadow across from Corina van Eijk's house (1990) and in a large semi-open tent, using designed-and natural-decor Opera Spanga performed Verdi's masterpiece Rigoletto.

The foundation for a distinctive opera company had been laid. Offenbach's Les Contes D'Hoffmann followed in 1991. Corina van Eijk played as an actress in Belle and Marie Antoinette is not dead (directed by Irma Achten/producer Kees Kasander), among others. She did the casting for both films. For Belle she also did the production management. She also did the casting for the feature film Abeltje based on the book by Annie M.G. Schmidt and the television series Otje (directed by Ben Sombogaard/producer Burny Bos). Corina van Eijk taught students at the Academy for Expression through Word and Gesture in Kampen and at the Youth Theater School Friesland, where she also directed her first film, based on Arthur Schnitzler's Reidans. With the Nationale Reisopera she directed Les Pecheurs des Perles by Bizet in 1993. She also directed this opera in the German Ludwigshaven and in the Opera House of Linz (Austria).

In 1994, Opera Spanga was asked by the Zwolle Schouwburg to produce Richard Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos. The city of Zwolle was very pleased with this series of performances. So in 2002, the city asked for the open-air premiere of Stravinsky's raunchy comedy Mavra. Opera Spanga here began a tour of the northern provinces of the Netherlands with great success. Corina van Eijk and her artistic team directed Camille Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila at the Nantes Opera House in France in 1994. The performance was very well received by the press in Nantes, but the audience scanned texts such as, “All Dutchmen are perverts” and “In the cachot with the director, even if it is a woman.”

Unsettling, comic, dramatic

At the Nationale Reisopera, Corina van Eijk directed Verdi's most complex work La Forza del Destino in 1995. In Drachten, she directed a musical theater production about the life of Boniface. She gave workshops in opera direction at the conservatories of Zwolle and Groningen and supervised a number of students at the Academy of Expression in Kampen. In 1995 Opera Spanga brought the Nantaise performance Samson et Dalila to Spanga to which both press and public responded with great enthusiasm. Corina van Eijk's productions are often described as disturbing, comic and dramatic. So in 1997 it was time for her to stage a real comedy. She chose, how could it be otherwise, Verdi's last work Falstaff. Opera Spanga performed this work with great pleasure and skill. After having tasted real comedy, in 1999 it was time for the perfect combination of drama and comedy: Il Trittico by Puccini. In 2000, Corina van Eijk directed the multimedia production Bluebeard's Castle by Bartók in Spanga and Amsterdam (Parade).

The first opera feature film

In 2001, Opera Spanga gained status through a four-year grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science. In that year, Corina van Eijk's company performed Verdi's Aida as a multimedia production and wrote the screenplay for the opera feature film Rigoletto. In 2002 Corina van Eijk produced and directed (in cooperation with Omrop Fryslân) Rigoletto, which premiered in Spanga in 2003 and was broadcast on Nederland 3 (NPS) in January 2004. In September 2004 Rigoletto was nominated for the “Golden Picture” in the Art & Culture category.



In 2003 Corina van Eijk worked with the Frisian band Reboelje on the rock opera Gysbert, Gysbert. In 2004 she directed in New York, in co-production with Nine Circles Chamber Theatre, When Samson met Delilah, an adaptation for mezzo-soprano and violin of Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila, with music by American Bruce Saylor. This performance toured Dutch theaters in January 2005. In the summer of 2004 the opera Buwalsky, a Road Opera by the Americans Mel Marvin and Jonathan Levi, directed by Corina van Eijk, had its world premiere in Spanga. This multimedia co-production, initiated and produced by Opera Spanga, with Nine Circles Chamber Theatre, went on tour through the USA that same year.

In the spring of 2005, Hindemith's opera Sancta Susanna premiered in Zwolle during the Dutch Chamber Opera Festival. Corina van Eijk directed the original female version of this opera and she invited Margrith Vrenegoor to direct a male version of the same opera. Corina van Eijk received this year's Frisian Carnation. Sancta Susanna toured through theaters in churches. In 2006, Corina van Eijk began writing and producing the opera film Samson and Delilah by Camille Saint-Saëns, which she directed in the summer of 2006. This opera film was a co-production with Omrop Fryslân, Aukso Chamber Orchestra and Camerata Silesia (Katowice Poland).

Knighthood

In the summer of 2007, in addition to the opera film Samson and Delilah, the multimedia opera Gods Videotheek by Krüs and Achten, initiated by Opera Spanga, had its world premiere. In the winter of 2007 Corina van Eijk received a knighthood. In 2008 she gave an opera direction workshop at the Toneelacademie Maastricht and guided a student with his graduation opera project. She produced and directed the youth performance Mrs. and Mr. Macbeth, a co-production with the Concertgebouw Amsterdam and in Spanga the opera Donna Giovanna (after Mozart's Don Giovanni). In 2009 she adapted and directed De Zaak Hoffmann, a co-production with Opera Studio Nederland and for Opera Spanga Elektra by Richard Strauss.



In 2010 Corina van Eijk was executive producer and director, commissioned by the IVAK, of the opera Carmen in Delfzijl. For Opera Spanga she produced Is this Tosca?, a one-woman-opera with Francis van Broekhuizen. In the winter of 2011 this performance went on tour. A year later, in co-production with the Rosa Ensemble, she made the music theater production Falstaff rivisto (Volkskrant: “belongs to the best Shakepeare interpretations of recent years”). Also in 2011, she wrote, directed and produced for the NTR the opera film Donna Giovanna, which premiered in a drive-in cinema in the summer of 2012. That summer the opera Stuyvesant Zero by Caroline Ansink and Jonathan Levi had its world premiere in Spanga. In the early spring of 2013 she did the artistic coordination, adaptation and direction of the music theater performance Macbeth for Fontys Hogeschool Tilburg, an interdisciplinary project of four academies.

25th anniversary

In the summer of 2013, Opera Spanga performed the multimedia musical theater production Romeo&Julia, paradise lies under your mother's feet, a collaboration with the Fries Jeugd Harmonie Orkest (Theaterkrant: “top 3 best performances of 2013” - Groene Amsterdammer: “One of the best performances of last season”). In the summer of 2014, Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, Opera Spanga's fourth opera film premiered with great success and was screened with live orchestra (Sinfonia Rotterdam conducted by Conrad van Alphen) during Opera Spanga's 25th anniversary. The film with live orchestra was shown at various locations in the Netherlands until January 24, 2015.

Corina van Eijk directed Monique Krüs' latest opera Anne & Zef (to be seen in Dutch theaters in 2016 and at the Holocaust Museum, Amsterdam, in spring 2017) for NedPhoGO. At Oranjewoud Festival, the performance she produced and directed, The Electric Flute, free to Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, by Floris van Bergeijk and Jonathan Levi had its world premiere. Later in 2015 she wrote and directed the music theater production Het Mislukte Debuut, this performance is part of the education project MuzykFirus. In 2016 she produced and directed Verdi's masterpiece Macbeth for Opera Spanga and gave a workshop at the Conservatory of Amsterdam. In 2017, she directed and produced Verdi's La Traviata for Opera Spanga. In the fall of 2017, she worked with the students of the opera class at the Dutch National Opera Academy.

Leeuwarden-Fryslân 2018

In 2016, Corina van Eijk began an international collaboration with two schools: MCAST (school for creative arts Mosta, Malta) and D'Drive (school for creative arts, Leeuwarden). Together with them and with her artistic team, she prepared the multimedia performance Aida by Verdi. This premiered as part of Cultural Capital Leeuwarden-Fryslân 2018 in Spanga in July 2018 and in September in Valletta, Malta. For LF2018 in Spanga, she also produced a fringe program that included four performances of a new Triumph March. In September 2018, Monique Krüs' opera, Corto Maltese, a ballad of the Salty Sea, written and directed by her, premiered in Valletta, Malta. In the fall of 2018, she directed Monique Krüs' opera Anne & Zef with an Albanian cast.

30th anniversary
In the summer of 2019, Van Eijk presented the double-bill Pagliacci & Il Tabarro, which also celebrated Opera Spanga's 30th anniversary.

Corona time - fifth opera feature film
In the midst of the corona epidemic, she produced her fifth opera feature film, The Other. It premiered online in October 2020. Still in the midst of corona time (summer 2021) she performed Carmen and De zus van Carmen (attended by schools from all over the country) in the tent in Spanga. The new production by Tjalling Wijnstra and Irma Achten Madam Scrooge was cancelled after an intensive rehearsal period in Rotterdam and Langelille due to the flare-up of the epidemic.

Theaters open again
In the winter of 2022, in collaboration with the Residentie Orkest, she performed a revival of Anne & Zef in the brand new theater Amare in The Hague. With the Iranian-Dutch soprano Lilian Farahani we made a multimedia solo recital in the series Jonge Nederlanders in the small hall of the Concertgebouw and in the brand new Amare, The Hague. I.s.m. with Keunstwurk, Frysk Harmony Orkest and the Noord Nederlands Jeugdorkest, in the framework of Meer muziek in de klas she made the music theater production Once upon a time for and by youth for the theaters of Sneek and Groningen in the spring of 2022. Performances like this one with Piter Wilkens and young singers like the half-Italian Sarah van Eijk and half-Frisian Wessel Wirken, among others, keep the richness of the Frisian, Drenthe and Groningen languages alive and vibrant. In the summer, she performed After the Flood by Jonathan Levi and Floris van Bergeijk and four young composers in Geert Slagter's cowshed. In 2022, Madam Scrooge was fortunately able to premiere in Langelille. In the summer of 2023, she performed Tchaikovsky's masterpiece Jevgeni Onegin in collaboration with Ivgi&Greben.

35th anniversary
The beginning of the anniversary year was celebrated in Schouwburg de Harmonie, Leeuwarden with a reprise of Madam Scrooge. In the summer she performed all female version of Verdi's Otello adapted by her and Floris van Bergeijk.

New Arts Plan '25 - '28
In the fall, she and students from Fontys Academy of the Arts filmed and rehearsed a contemporary Lulu written by librettist Jonathan Levi and three students from Fontys Academy of the Arts. It premiered in January 2025.

Watch a portrait in three parts of Omrop Fryslân's Corina van Eijk here (in dutch): part 1 | part 2 | part 3