Born in Bavaria, he studied at the Academy of Applied Arts in Vienna. He lives in Hamburg, where he teaches at the academy of fine arts. He used to be the resident designer at Schauspiel Köln, then Staatstheater Stuttgart. His works have been presented in Vienna (Burgtheater), Hamburg (Deutsches Schauspielhaus), Munich (Residenztheater), Berlin (Volksbühne, Schillertheater), and elsewhere in Germany. He designed sets for productions staged around the world, including Vienna (The Clemency of Tito, Dead Man Walking, The Consul), Salzburg (Die Gezeichneten, Fidelio), Baden Baden (Parsifal, Tosca), Berlin (Die Rosenkavalier), Dresden (Rigoletto), Amsterdam (Tosca, Turandot, Tannhäuser), Munich (Moses and Aaron), Lyon and Tel Aviv (Fidelio), London and Barcelona (Parsifal), Chicago (The Flying Dutchman), San Francisco (Parsifal, The Flying Dutchman), Geneva (Salome), Los Angeles (The Flying Dutchman), Zurich (A Masked Ball, Tristan und Isolde), Naples (I due Foscari).
In 2010 he designed the following productions: La fanciulla del Westin Amsterdam (dir. Nikolaus Lehnhoff); Die tote Stadt in Nancy (dir. Philipp Himmelmann); Elektra at the Salzburg Festival (dir. Nikolaus Lehnhoff) and the Teatro dell’Opera, Rome; Niobe for the Royal Opera House, London. For his designs for Szymanowski’s King Roger (dir. David Pountney) staged in Bregenz, Barcelona and Warsaw he was awarded the Opus – Deutscher Bühnenpreis. In 2014 The Girl of the West was shown by the Opéra National de Paris; while Guillaume Tell and Moses in Egypt were staged by the Welsh National Opera, Cardiff. In May 2015 La Scala presented a production of Turandot with his scenography.
(photo: artist's archive)
