Krzysztof Warlikowski

The Polish theatre and opera director Krzysztof Warlikowski studied history, philosophy and Romance languages at Kraków’s Jagiellonian University as well as philosophy and French language and literature at the Sorbonne in Paris and directing at the Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Kraków. His opera productions include Iphigénie en Tauride, Parsifal, The Makropulos Case, Król Roger, Don Carlos, Bluebeard’s Castle / La Voix humaine, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, A Quiet Place and Hamlet at the Paris Opéra; Die Frau ohne Schatten, Die Gezeichneten, Eugene Onegin, Salome, Tristan und Isolde, Dido and Aeneas / Erwartung, Le Grand Macabre and most recently Káťa Kabanová at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich; Médée, Macbeth, Lulu, Don Giovanni and Les Contes d’Hoffmann at La Monnaie in Brussels; Wozzeck at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam; The Rake’s Progress at the Berlin State Opera; From the House of the Dead at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome; Pelléas et Mélisande at the Ruhrtriennale; Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence; Alceste and Poppea e Nerone (Philippe Boesmans’s orchestration of L’incoronazione di Poppea) at the Teatro Real in Madrid and Bluebeard’s Castle / La Voix humaine at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. His staging of The Makropulos Case was a co-production between the Paris Opéra and the Teatro Real in Madrid and won the Premio Lírico Teatro Campoamor as the Best Opera Production of 2009.

Krzysztof Warlikowski made his Salzburg Festival debut with Henze’s The Bassarids in 2018, returning for Elektra in 2020 and 2021, Macbeth in 2023 and Weinberg’s The Idiot in 2024. Most recently he directed Der Rosenkavalier at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.

Since its inception in 2008 he has been the artistic director of Warsaw’s Nowy Teatr, where his productions have included (A)pollonia in 2009 (awarded Russia’s Golden Mask theatre prize), The End in 2010, The African Tales by Shakespeare in 2011, Kabaret Warszawski in 2013, Les Français, which was premiered at the Ruhrtriennale in 2015, We Are Leaving (based on Hanoch Levin’s Suitcase Packers) in 2018 and Odyssey: A Story for Hollywood in 2021. His Nowy Teatr productions have also been acclaimed on numerous international tours. His other work includes Phèdre(s) and Un Tramway (based on Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire) with Isabelle Huppert at the Odéon in Paris and Elizabeth Costello at the Festival d’Avignon.

Krzysztof Warlikowski was made a Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres in 2013. In 2021 the Venice Biennale awarded him the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre.