Olaf Winter

The German lighting designer Olaf Winter began his career in the theatre at the Wolfgang Borchert Theatre in Münster, while he was studying musicology, journalism and German language and literature. From 1986 to 1989 he studied lighting design at the Studio and Forum of Stage Design in New York. In 1989 he started to work as lighting designer for William Forsythe and the Frankfurt Ballet. He became lighting designer for the Frankfurt Opera in 1994. Since his apprenticeship with Forsythe, he has designed lighting for numerous productions at the Frankfurt Opera, and for the Salzburg Festival (where he made his debut in 1998 with Káťa Kabanová), the Paris Opéra, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, La Scala, Milan, the Bavarian State Opera in Munich and other major opera houses. He regularly collaborates with the directors Claus Guth, Christof Loy and Christoph Marthaler. In 2001 Olaf Winter was named technical director of the Frankfurt Opera; since the 2009/10 season he has concurrently held the same position with the Schauspiel Frankfurt.