Olaf Winter (lighting designer)

Olaf Winter (born 1958 in Hagen ) is a German lighting designer who works for major opera houses .

life and work

Between 1978 and 1985, Winter studied musicology, German and journalism in Münster. He then studied Lighting Design at the Studio and Forum of Stage Design in New York City. In 1989 he became a lighting designer with William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet and worked as a freelancer for the Bavarian State Theater in Munich, the Pocket Opera Company in Nuremberg, the Ensemble Modern (for example for Frank Zappa's Yellow Shark ). In 1994 he became lighting designer at the Frankfurt Opera and in 2001 its technical director. Olaf Winter has been the technical director of Oper und Schauspiel Frankfurt since 2009 .

As a guest he designed the lighting for productions at the Salzburg Festival , the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the Grand Opera in Houston, the Liceu Barcelona and the Royal Opera House in London as well as at the State Opera in the Schiller Theater in Berlin, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and other well-known theaters and festivals. He has worked with a number of notable directors including:

Claus Guth ( Da Ponte cycle in Salzburg, Iltrittico at the Frankfurt Opera, L'Orfeo at the Theater an der Wien and Die Frau ohne Schatten at La Scala),
Christof Loy ( Armida in the Salzburg Festival, Tristan and Isolde in London, Alceste at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence ),
Christoph Marthaler ( Katja Kabanova in Salzburg, La traviata and Wozzeck in Paris),
Christof Nel ( Salome and Parsifal in Frankfurt, Aida at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich).

In 2014 he designed the lighting for the world premiere of the opera Tales from the Vienna Woods by Ödön von Horváth and HK Gruber at the Bregenz Festival . Michael Sturminger staged it . This production was also shown at the Theater an der Wien in 2015 .