Christian Schmidt

Christian Schmidt was born in 1966 in Coburg and studied set and costume design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.  

Since 1992 he has worked regularly with the director Claus Guth. This artistic partnership has resulted in various acclaimed productions, among them Der fliegende Holländer at the Bayreuth Festival, Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Hamburg State Opera, the world premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s Heart Chamber at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte and Fidelio at the Salzburg Festival, where Christian Schmidt also created set designs for Hans Neuenfels’s production of The Queen of Spades in 2019. Christian Schmidt’s work in the theatre has taken him to the Residenztheater in Munich, the Schauspielhaus in Düsseldorf, and the Akademietheater and the Wiener Festwochen in Vienna, among others.  

In addition, he regularly collaborates with directors including Yona Kim, Amélie Niermeyer, Christof Loy and Christian Spuck. He is currently working with Andreas Homoki on Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Zurich Opera. Future projects include designs for productions by Evgeny Titov, Vasily Barkhatov and Mateja Koležnik.  

The magazine Opernwelt named Christian Schmidt Set Designer of the Year in 2003 and Costume Designer of the Year in 2005 and 2021. He was awarded the Rolf Mares Prize in 2006 for his set and costume designs for Simon Boccanegra at the Hamburg State Opera. He was also nominated for an International Opera Award in 2017 and 2020.