Cornelius Obonya as Tevje in Anatevka

Chamber actor Cornelius Obonya takes over in the current series Anatevka the role of the milkman Tevye, making his folk opera debut. The castle actor and long-time performer of Everyman at the Salzburg Festival steps in for Dominique Horwitz, who is ill.

Cornelius Obonya was born in Vienna. After abandoning his acting studies at the Max Reinhardt Seminar, the cabaret artist Gerhard Bronner, the then Volkstheater director Emmy Werner and director Andrea Breth shaped the actor’s early career. Important engagements took him to, among others, the Schaubühne Berlin, the Burgtheater Vienna and the Salzburg Festival, where he played Everyman from 2013 to 2016.

The versatile actor celebrated great success with his solo evening in 2010/11 Cordoba – The second leg by Florian Scheuba and Rubert Hennig at the Rabenhof Theater in Vienna. Cornelius Obonya is also known to a wide audience from numerous German and Austrian film and television productions. The actor also made a name for himself as a commentator on documentaries and interpreter of audio books.

Cornelius Obonya received numerous awards, including the Ferdinand-Raimund-Ring, the German Audio Book Prize 2024, the Salzburger Stier 2010 and was Actor of the Year by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (Ö1).

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Anatevka is Obonya’s second foray into musicals: in 2008/09 he played Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’ Broadway musical The Producerswhich was shown in the Ronacher in Vienna and in the Admiralspalast in Berlin.

“You don’t sing the Tevye every day The Producers “It’s a pleasure to travel again to a new, different Jewish world after 14 years,” says Obonya, excited about his upcoming role debut.

Anatevka tells the moving story of a Jewish community in Russia in the early 20th century and addresses the struggle for tradition and identity: the milkman Tevye, his wife Golde and their five daughters live in the Jewish shtetl Anatevka. What begins like a fairy tale turns out to be a highly realistic story: the daughters’ marriage plans put the father’s sense of tradition to the test – and when a pogrom breaks out in Anatevka, the family is scattered.