It was first performed in the Maschinenhalle Zeche Zweckel, Gladbeck, Germany, on 25 September 2010 as part of the Ruhrtriennale music and arts festival by the contemporary music ensemble musikFabrik in collaboration with local youth groups and students of the Folkwang University, Essen.
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The two first performances of Gisela! at the Ruhrtriennale and in Dresden show the two possible performing options: at the Ruhrtriennale all the performers were young people, mostly teens, and in Dresden the Staatskapelle and Staatsopernchor as well as the main Ensemble performed the work.
Amongst the artists who have appeared at the festival are Ariane Mnouchkine, Peter Brook, Bill Viola, Patrice Chéreau, Ilya Kabakov, Peter Sellars, Christian Boltanski, Bill Frisell, Patti Smith, Elvis Costello, Akram Khan (dancer), Cecilia Bartoli and Thomas Hampson.
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It was founded in 2002 by the government of North Rhine-Westphalia with Gerard Mortier, the impresario and former artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, as its founding director.
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2009–2011 is directed by Willy Decker and takes as its central theme Urmomente (Primal moments), the relationship between creativity and religion, focusing in successive years on Jewish, Islamic, and Buddhist culture.
He continued with his model of blending and interpenetration of different styles and genres with productions for the RuhrTriennale in 2004, "Orpheus", a commissioned production for Gerard Mortier, and the German premiere of the Rome section of the Philip Glass opera "The CIVIL warS" in September 2004.
His large “soccer oratorio” for the Ruhrtriennale 2005 and the Soccer World Championship in Germany 2006 experienced widespread media coverage in German as well as foreign media.