Calixto Bieito Director

Season 22/23 Artist

Born in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos), Calixto Bieito was director of the Teatre Romea in Barcelona, of the the International Arts Festival of Castilla y León and the Barcelona International Teatre (BIT). From 2013 to 2015, he was resident artist at the Theatre Basel. Since 2017, he is artistic director of the Bilbao Teatro Arriaga. 

Since the 2000s, he has been focusing mainly on operatic stage direction, even though he is still working for the theatre. With Carmen, at the Peralada Festival, Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Salzburg Festival, Hamlet at the Edinburgh International Festival, Don Giovanni in Hanover and Il Seraglio at the Komische Oper in Berlin he became one of the most controversial directors of his generation, but also one of the most fascinating. 

He recently directed Die Soldaten, by Zimmermann (Zurich, Berlin, Madrid), Wilde, by Hector Parra at the Schwetzingen Festival, Tannhäuser at the Flemish Opera, The Fairy Queen in Stuttgart, Lear, Carmen and Simon Boccanegra at the Paris Opera, La Juive at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Tosca in Oslo, The Power of Fate at the English National Opera, Oresteia by Xenakis in Basel, The Trojans in Nuremberg, Die Gezeichneten by Schreker at the Komische Oper in Berlin, Moses and Aaron and Le Grand Macabre at the Dresden Semperoper, Elias at the Theater an der Wien, Hector Parra’s The Kindly Ones at the Flemish Opera, and Mendi Mendiyan by José María Usandizaga at the Teatro Arriaga. 

These last seasons, he directed Carmen and Tristan und Isolde in Vienna, Lohengrin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the St John Passion at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Rudi Stephan's Die ersten Menschen in Amsterdam, War and Peace in Geneva, Kátia Kabanová and Erwin Schulhoff's Flammen in Prague.

During the season 2022/2023, he will stage Joachim Raff's Samson in Weimar, Mahler's Von der Liebe Tod at the Vienna Staatsoper, Cavalli's Eliogabalo in Zurich and Giulio Cesare in Egitto in Amsterdam.