Christian Longchamp was born in Lausanne and studied art history and philosophy in Geneva and at the Sorbonne in Paris. He began his career organizing exhibitions on contemporary artists and film makers. Since 2004 he has worked as a curator at the Louvre Auditorium (2004—7); as artistic adviser, dramaturge and head of publications at La Monnaie in Brussels (2007—14); and as dramaturge and head of publications at the Paris Opéra (2014/15). From 2016 to 2019 he was artistic adviser to Eva Kleinitz at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg.
Christian Longchamp has worked as a dramaturge on many of Krzysztof Warlikowski’s productions, notably Don Carlos, Bluebeard’s Castle / La Voix humaine, Hamlet and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District at the Paris Opéra; Macbeth, Lulu, Don Giovanni, Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Cherubini’s Médée at La Monnaie; L’incoronazione di Poppea at the Teatro Real in Madrid; Handel’s Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence; Wozzeck at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam; From the House of the Dead at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome; and Henze’s The Bassarids, Elektra and Macbeth at the Salzburg Festival. He has additionally worked as a dramaturge on Alvis Hermanis’s productions of La Damnation de Faust at the Paris Opéra and Jenůfa at La Monnaie; on Joël Pommerat’s production of the world premiere of Philippe Boesmans’s Au monde at La Monnaie; on Thomas Ostermeier’s production of Twelfth Night at the Comédie-Française; and on Romeo Castellucci’s productions of Orfeo ed Euridice at the Vienna Festival and at La Monnaie, Moses und Aron and Alessandro Scarlatti’s Il primo omicidio at the Paris Opéra, Schwanengesang D744 — based on Schubert lieder — at the Festival d’Avignon and Das Rheingold and Die Walküre at La Monnaie. He regularly writes about politics and culture for the magazine La Règle du jeu. His book Pour une autre Italie was published in 2023.
