The lighting designer Franck Evin comes from Nantes and at the age of 19 moved to Paris to study piano. In the evenings he accompanied singers at the café-theatre Le Connetable. During this time, he also became interested in lighting, finally deciding to combine his interests in music and technology. Thanks to a scholarship from the French Ministry of Culture, in 1983 he became assistant to the head of lighting at the Opéra de Lyon, where he worked with directors including Ken Russell and Robert Wilson. In 1986 he began to work as an independent lighting designer at the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf, and he achieved his master craftsman’s diploma in lighting in 1993. During this time, he worked closely with the director Werner Schröter and with the conductor Eberhard Kloke. Productions followed in cities including Nantes, Strasbourg, Paris, Lyon, Vienna, Bonn, Brussels and Los Angeles. From 1995 to 2012 he was head of lighting at the Komische Oper Berlin, where he was in charge of all the company’s new productions. Here he formed important partnerships with Andreas Homoki, Barrie Kosky, Calixto Bieto and Hans Neuenfels.
Since 2012 Franck Evin has been head of lighting at the Zurich Opera House. He simultaneously works freelance as a lighting designer for productions internationally, including for the Paris Opéra, La Scala, Milan, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Opera Vlaanderen, the opera houses of Oslo, Stockholm, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Munich and Graz and at the Bayreuth Festival and the Salzburg Festival, where he made his debut in 2016 as the lighting designer for Reinhard von der Thannen’s production of Gounod’s Faust.
In March 2006 Franck Evin was awarded the German stage prize Opus in the category of lighting design.
