23/05/21 Her heart beat for the musical genre and, as a choreographer, she made a significant contribution to making the musical feel at home on Austrian stages. She was particularly connected to the theaters in Linz and Salzburg. Anna Vaughan died on Friday (May 21) at the age of 81 in Salzburg.
The daughter of an organist and a pianist, Vaughan was born in Bearsted in the English county of Kent. She was trained as a dancer at the Royal Ballet School in London, as well as in acting, singing, pantomime and jazz dance. She was then a dancer at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and at Sadler’s Wells, then in Paris as a soloist in internationally renowned companies such as those of Léonide Massine and Maurice Béjart.
She produced her first choreographies in Graz and at the Theater an der Wien, so for The man from la Mancha with Josef Meinrad in the title role. She also choreographed various television shows for ORF. At the Landestheater Linz she became head of ballet in 1969 and choreographed a.o. the German-language premiere of Silk Stockings (1974) and made her directorial debut there with the production Godspellwho was invited to the Wiener Festwochen.
She later moved to the Salzburg State Theater (1981 to 1986) and choreographed her own ballet productions and musicals. In 1985 the German premiere of Oliver! with their choreography. 1983 she staged here Cabaret. 38 years later, the versatile artist died just one day after the premiere of this play in the State Theater.
In Germany, Austria and Switzerland she staged and choreographed around 35 different musicals (often several times), including The Rocky Horror Show, West Side Story, Jesus Christ Superstar, Avoid, Anatevka, La Cage aux Folles and line 1.
The director of the Berliner Kammerspiele, Edith Zöllner, brought her to Berlin in 1984, where Vaughn joined the theater in Moabit Godspell made her Berlin debut. Immediately afterwards she staged the German-language premiere of at the Theater des Westens Peter Pan with Ute Lemper in the title role (1984). In the following years she worked at the Berliner Kammerspiele as in-house director for the musical genre.
Anna Vaughan taught at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, later at the University of the Arts in Berlin and at the August Everding School in Munich. (Landestheater / dpk)
Image: Salzburg State Theater
–
