Lydia Steier Director

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Lydia Steier studied at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio. She then obtained a Fullbright Scholarship and moved to Germany. 

She staged Eugène Ionesco's The Lesson in Berlin’s HAU and the multimedia production of Eight Songs for a Mad King by Peter Maxwell Davies, which was presented in Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Mexico. She then directed productions of La Clemenza di Tito and Brundibar for the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, Lohengrin at the Los Angeles Opera, Madama Butterfly in Bremen, and The Merry Widow at the Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar. Her productions were further staged in international festivals in Hong Kong, Dublin and New York. 

After her productions of Busoni’s Turandot and Leonvallo’s Pagliacci, she was named by Deutschlandradio Kultur as their “New Discovery of the Year”. Her staging of Stockhausen's Donnerstag aus Licht was selected by Opernwelt magazine as the “Best Staging of the 15/16 Season”, and her productions of Händel’s Saul at the Staatstheater Oldenburg and Pascal Dusapin’s Perela at the Staatstheater Mainz were nominated for the FAUST-Theater Prize. 

Her most recent works include Giulio Cesare at the Komische Oper Berlin, Turandot at the Oper Köln, Les Troyens at the Semperoper Dresden, Die Zauberflöte at the Salzburger Festspiele, Oedipus Rex/Iolanta at the Oper Frankfurt, Diodati.Unendlich by Michael Wertmüller at the Theater Basel, The Queen of Spade at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, La Juive, Alcina and Le Nozze di Figaro at the Staatsoper Hannover, Carmen at the Oper Köln, Les Indes Galantes at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and A Dream of Armageddon by Dai Fujikura at the New National Theater in Tokyo. 

In June 2021 she presented La Fanciulla del West at the Staatsoper Berlin. In the 2022/23 season she will stage Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Baden-Baden Festival and make her Paris Opera debut.

Paris Opera debut