MORTIER AWARDS
A European cultural initiative
History / Mission
The Mortier Lifetime Achievement Award and the Mortier Next Generation Award were established to carry on the legacy of theatre director and visionary Gerard Mortier, who passed away in 2014. They are awarded to individuals who, in the spirit of Gerard Mortier, strive to find new forms of artistic expression.
"Making theatre means breaking through the routine of everyday life, questioning the acceptance of economic, political and military power as normal, sensitising the community to questions of human existence that cannot be regulated by laws, and affirming that the world can be better than it is. Theatre is therefore a mission, almost a priestly office, without being a revealed religion. Theatre is a religion of the universal human condition."
Gerard Mortier: Dramaturgy of a Passion (Kassel 2014)
Mortier Awards
The Mortier Awards were established in 2013 and presented for the first time in 2014. The idea of establishing an award in recognition of Gerard Mortier's groundbreaking work in the field of the performing arts came from Albrecht Thiemann, long-time editor-in-chief of the magazine ‘Opernwelt’, and Heinz Weyringer, long-time director of the ‘Ring Award’ opera-directing and stage design competition.
The first Mortier Lifetime Achievement Award was presented in 2014 at the Schauspielhaus Graz theatre to his long-time companion Sylvain Cambreling, who represented the recently deceased award-winner Gerard Mortier. Film director Michael Haneke, whom Mortier had persuaded a few years earlier to stage Mozart's Don Giovanni (in Paris) and Così fan tutte (in Madrid), gave the laudatory speech.
The second Mortier Lifetime Achievement Award went in 2017 to Austrian pianist Markus Hinterhäuser, whom Mortier had entrusted with the conception of the Zeitfluss Festival as part of the Salzburg Festival in 1993. As artistic director of the Vienna Festival and (since 2016) artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, Hinterhäuser has always felt connected to Mortier's artistic philosophy – renewal based on a critical awareness of the past. This award ceremony also took place at the Schauspielhaus Graz; the laudatory speech was given by Peter Sellars, the American music theatre visionary who was an early member of Mortier's artistic family.
At the suggestion of Serge Dorny, artistic director of the Bavarian State Opera, in addition to the non-monetary main prize for lifetime achievement, a sponsorship award for young artists, the Mortier Next Generation Award, was created in 2018. For the first time, this award, worth €30,000 and including a fellowship of several months at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, was presented at the opera house in Ghent, Gerard Mortier's birthplace. The winner, selected by a jury, was the young Polish dramaturge and director Krystian Lada, who currently works as artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale, founded by Mortier. The laudatory speech was given by Jan Vanderhouwe, opera director at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen (Antwerp/Ghent).
In 2021, the Mortier Lifetime Achievement Award and the Mortier Next Generation Award were presented together. As part of the Salzburg Festival, the main prize went to filmmaker and author Alexander Kluge – the laudatory speech was given by writer and librettist Händlklaus – and the Mortier Next Generation Award went to young opera director Ulrike Schwab, a trained singer (laudatory speech by Albrecht Thiemann).
Thanks to the active support of the Opéra national de Paris and the Fondation Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent, the fourth edition of the Mortier Awards was held in Paris in 2024. Ariane Mnouchkine was the recipient of the Mortier Lifetime Achievement Award, while the young dramaturge and director Jeffrey Döring will use the sponsorship award to develop a music theatre project based on the Bluebeard story.
In September 2025 the award ceremony took place at the Ruhrtriennale. The Lifetime Achievement Award went to music researcher and conductor Hartmut Haenchen, and the Next Generation Award to dramaturge and stage director Frieda Lange.
Gerard Mortier
Gerard Mortier was a universalist. Not in a technocratic sense, but as a humanist who believed in the fundamental ideals of the Enlightenment. It is important to emphasise this at a time when intellectual, social and cultural divides are deepening and political polarisation is increasing. At a time when there is a tendency to confuse the necessary struggle for global justice for all with the fragmenting, exclusive dynamics of identity politics, which threatens to lose sight of the big picture. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité – the ethical principles associated with the French Revolution that today adorn the facades of every public building in France – were not, for Mortier, glorious slogans of the past. For him, they remained unattained goals of an open mission of humanity, guiding principles and the driving force behind his work in the performing arts.
Music and theatre undoubtedly formed the cornerstones of Mortier's passion and professional life. Nevertheless, he never indulged in l'art pour l'art escapism. He understood music, theatre and the arts in general as media for exploring the conditio humana. And that meant exploring the diversity of human experience, engaging with complex relationships, accepting contradictions and ambiguities – between male and female, queer and straight, black and white, between East and West, North and South. Mortier's thinking and his artistic canon were rooted in the European tradition – in archetypal narratives, ancient Greek and Roman myths; in archetypal figures such as Faust or Don Juan; in Monteverdi, Mozart and classical modernism. However, the radius and scope of his curiosity extended far beyond the “old world”. His home was Europe and the world, but he always returned to Flanders and his native city of Ghent. There he found inspiration for new projects, and, to his beloved Ghent, he brought countless artistic partners. He thought globally and felt locally – one could also say that for him, the centre of the world was not Delphi, Rome or Jerusalem, but the proud bourgeois city of Ghent.
The initiative / main prize
When Heinz Weyringer, long-time director of the international ‘Ring Award’ competition in Graz, and Albrecht Thiemann, long-time editor-in-chief of the Berlin magazine ‘Opernwelt’, launched the Mortier Awards in 2013, they did so with the intention of bringing to life and developing for the future the universal humanist mission that had impressed and enriched so many people who had the privilege of meeting Gerard Mortier. With the confidence of Sisyphus – a figure whom Mortier greatly admired because he never gives up rolling the stone to the top of the mountain, i.e. achieving the seemingly impossible. The symbolic main prize (Mortier Lifetime Achievement Award) has been awarded five times to date.
Grand Prize Winners / Mortier Award – Lifetime Achievement
Gerard Mortier (2013), Markus Hinterhäuser (2017), Alexander Kluge (2021), Ariane Mnouchkine (2023), Hartmut Haenchen (2025)
Next Generation Award
Six years ago, on the recommendation and with the help of Serge Dorny, the Mortier Awards established a prize for young artists, the Mortier Next Generation Award. It is endowed with 30,000 euros and linked to a special working scholarship (short fellowship) from the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Between 2019 and 2025, the sponsorship award was presented four times.
The 2027 Mortier Next Generation Award cermony will take place in March 2027 at the Teatro Real Madrid.
Mortier Next Generation Award Winners
Krystian Lada (2019), Ulrike Schwab (2021), Jeffrey Döring (2023), Frieda Lange (2025)
Lectures / Debates / Workshops
The Mortier Awards association is planning another project for the coming years: public lectures, dialogues, debates and workshops on current cultural policy issues. We are thinking of a culture of conversation and discourse that not only allows controversial positions but takes them seriously and weighs them up argumentatively. A culture of debate that enables insights beyond ubiquitous labels and frames, etiquettes or prejudices. Under the label of the Mortier Awards, events and encounters are to be organised in Belgium, Germany, Austria, France and Spain in cooperation with partners from the worlds of culture, politics and business. The importance of an open concept of culture (repeatedly called for and emphasised by Gerard Mortier) in the face of particularistic and identity-political trends in the cultural sector could be a key question here.