Olaf A. Schmitt has been artistic director of the Kasseler Musiktage festival since 2016, and since September 2024 is co-head of dramaturgy at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. He studied theatre, film and media with Hans-Thies Lehmann and musicology in Frankfurt am Main. From 2005 to 2008 he was concert dramaturg at Theater Heidelberg, going on to become a dramaturg at the Bavarian State Opera in 2013. From 2014 to 2019 he worked as a dramaturg at the Bregenz Festival, where he remained an artistic advisor until 2024. Guest engagements as a dramaturg have taken him to the Cologne Opera, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, the Theater an der Wien, the Paris Opéra, the Opéra de Lyon and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He has strong working partnerships with the directors Martin Kušej, Johannes Erath, Barrie Kosky and Nikolaus Habjan and the composer Miroslav Srnka, and has also worked with directors including Stefan Herheim, Lydia Steier, Elisabeth Stöppler, Saar Magal and Mariame Clément.
From 2014 to 2024 Olaf A. Schmitt taught dramaturgy on the set and costume design course at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, and since 2022 he has worked at the Weißensee Academy of Art in 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 was co-editor of 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 Handbuch der Oper. He has lectured at universities including those of Bamberg, Munich, Bayreuth, South Carolina and Minnesota.
