Birgit Kajtna-Wönig was born in Graz and studied music theatre directing at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna and cultural management at the University of Music and Drama in Hamburg. Between 2007 and 2025 she was engaged as a house director at the Hamburg State Opera and at the Vienna State Opera.
Internationally, she has worked at venues including the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, La Scala, Milan, the Wuppertaler Bühnen, the Stuttgart State Theatre, the Graz Opera and the Vienna Burgtheater, and at the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals, the Schwetzingen SWR Festival and Bard SummerScape in New York.
She has directed projects such as Schneewittchen at the Hamburg State Opera and Alma Deutscher’s opera Cinderella at the Vienna State Opera, also released on DVD.
She has a close working partnership with the conductor Adam Fischer. Together they developed Orfeo ed Euridice — a semi-staged version of Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo — for the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. They have also presented this production with the Danish Chamber Orchestra in Copenhagen, and at the MusikTheater an der Wien and the Graz Musikverein. At the 2023 Salzburg Festival they created a semi-staged performance of Mozart’s Il re pastore. They followed this up in 2025 with a semi-staging of Mitridate, re di Ponto in Salzburg and at the Hamburg State Opera. Most recently they created a semi-staged version of Parsifal for the Wagner Days at Müpa in Budapest in June 2026.
Beyond opera, Birgit Kajtna-Wönig dedicates herself to exploring innovative formats. These have included the art song project Die Liebe liebt das Wandern — eine Smartphone Dichtung for the Vienna State Opera and the staged recital Das Laub fällt auch im Paradies for the Hamburg State Opera.
As a producer and director, she developed the music video Ida’s Song, about the Jewish poet and feminist Ida Dehmel. It received its premiere in 2022 at the Thalia Theater, and in 2023 won awards at the Female Filmmakers Festival Berlin, the Portugal Indie Film Festival and the Vienna International Film Awards.
Since 2025 Birgit Kajtna-Wönig has been working as an intimacy co-ordinator for film and theatre, most recently on the production Frauenliebe und -sterben, directed by Tobias Kratzer at the Hamburg State Opera.
