Michael Bauer Lighting designer

Season 23/24 Artist – Season 24/25 Artist

Michael Bauer has been chief lighting designer for the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich since 1998.

He has collaborated with numerous directors in Munich including Luc Bondy, David Bosch, August Everding, Andreas Dresen, Claus Guth, Richard Jones, Yannis Kokkos, Peter Konwitschny, Jurgen Rose, and Roland Schwab on a host of productions ranging from Tosca and Don Carlo to Nabucco, Die Fledermaus, Der fliegende Holländer, Tristan und Isolde, Jenůfa, Die Zauberflöte, Medea, Guillaume Tell, L’elisir d’amore, Orfeo, Arabella, and Mefistofele. 

He has also worked in theatres in Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Madrid, London, San Francisco, New York, Milan, Antwerp, Ghent, Basle, Athens, Saint Petersburg, Paris, Bilbao, Rome, Lisbon. 

Michael Bauer regularly collaborates with Calixto Bieito (Boris Godunov, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Così fan tutte, Tannhäuser, La Juive, Oresteia, Tosca, Moses und Aron, Simon Boccanegra, Elias, Le Grand Macabre, and Falstaff). 

These last seasons, he created the lighting for Lohengrin and The Merry Wives of Windsor at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Hänsel und Gretel, Lear, Idomeneo, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Tosca, The Nose, L’Elisir d’amore, The Magic flute, Peter Grimes, Hanjo and Sémélé at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich, Manon, Falstaff and Fidelio at the Hamburg Staatsoper, Don Quichotte and Samson et Dalila at the Mariinsky Theatre, Der fliegende Holländer at the Munich Opera Festival, Rigoletto, Irrelohe and Bluthaus at the Lyon Opera, Tristan und Isolde at the Vienna State Opera, Tannhäuser at the Leipzig Opera, La gazza ladra at the MusikTheater an der Wien, La Guerre et la Paix at the Budapest Opera.

At the Paris Opera: Werther, 2009 ; La Cenerentola, 2011 ; Simon Boccanegra, 2018 ; Faust, 2022