Étienne Pluss Set designer

Etienne Pluss ran an art gallery in Geneva before obtaining a set design diploma at Berlin’s University of the Arts in 1996. He began his career in the theatre as design assistant to Achim Freyer and Karl-Ernst Herrmann. He has collaborated with many stage directors, including George Tabori, Nadja Loschky, Claus Guth, Richard Brunel, Christoph Loy, Enrico Lübbe, Adriana Altaras, Patrick Schlösser.

His most recent work includes his sets for Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Elektra for the Bonn Opera, Tristan und Isolde at the Leipzig Opera, The Passenger for the Graz Opera, and et Winterreise at the Leipzig Theatre. During the pandemy, he designed the sets for La serva padrona at the Frankfurt Opera. In 2021, he designed the sets for Salomé at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. He also designed the sets for Richard Brunel’s production of Rigoletto at the Opéra national de Lorraine, for Immo Karaman’s production of Otello at the Hannover Staatsoper and for Evgeny Titov’s production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth at the Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus. In 2022, he designed the sets for The Makropulos Affair in Berlin, for Georg Friedrich Haas’s Bluthaus at the Munich Staatsoper, for Pascal Dusapin’s Il Viaggio, Dante at the Aix-en-Provence Festival, Giacomo Puccini’s Triptych at the Salzburg Festival, Pierangelo Valtinoni’s Alice in Wonderland at the Zurich Opernhaus, and Philippe Boesmans’ On purge bébé! at La Monnaie in Brussels.

He also designed the sets for Don Carlo for the 2022-23 season’s opening of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. In 2023, he has collaborated with director Katharina Thoma for Don Giovanni at the Leipzig Opera, and with Nadja Loschky for Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet at the Komische Oper Berlin.

At the Paris Opera: La Bohème, 2017