Olaf A. Schmitt has been artistic director of the Kasseler Musiktage festival since 2016, and Co-Head of Dramaturgy at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin since September 2024. He studied theatre, film and media studies with Hans-Thies Lehmann and musicology in Frankfurt am Main. From 2005 to 2008, he was concert dramaturge at the Heidelberg Theatre, then dramaturge at the Bavarian State Opera until 2013. From 2014 to 2019, he worked as a dramaturge at the Bregenz Festival, where he remained an artistic advisor until 2024. Guest dramaturgies have taken him to the Cologne Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Theater an der Wien, the Opéra national de Paris, the Opéra de Lyon and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He has worked closely with the directors Martin Kušej, Johannes Erath, Barrie Kosky, Nikolaus Habjan and the composer Miroslav Srnka, as well as with Stefan Herheim, Lydia Steier, Elisabeth Stöppler, Saar Magal and Mariame Clément, among others.
From 2014 to 2024, Olaf A. Schmitt taught the stage and costume design class at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, and since 2022 at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin; he has also taught on the dramaturgy and music theatre / opera singing courses at the Bavarian Theatre Academy in Munich and on the arts administration course at the University of Zurich.
He contributed to the Heiner Müller-Handbuch (2003) and co-edited AufBrüche – Theaterarbeit zwischen Text und Situation (2004). He has contributed numerous texts to a variety of publications, among them Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart and the Handbuch der Oper. He has lectured at universities including those of Bamberg, Bayreuth, South Carolina and Minnesota.
