Händl Klaus

 Händl Klaus comes from the Tyrol and lives on Lake Biel (Switzerland) and in Vienna (Austria). Following early work as an actor at the Vienna Schauspielhaus and supporting roles in films by Christian Berger, Michael Haneke, Jessica Hausner, Dagmar Knöpfel and Wolfram Paulus, in 1994 he published his first prose volume, Legenden, which was awarded the Rauris Literature Prize and the Robert Walser Prize.

This was followed by the radio play Kleine Vogelkunde (which was named Austrian Radio Play of the Year) in 1996 and the double monologue Ich ersehne die Alpen; So entstehen die Seen in 2001. His play (WILDE) Mann mit traurigen Augen was staged in a production directed by Sebastian Nübling at the Schauspiel Hannover in 2003, and at steirischer herbst and Berlin Theatertreffen. In 2008 his double monologue was presented at the Mapa Teatro in Bogotá as Ansío los Alpes. Así nacen los lagos.

At the invitation of Frank Baumbauer he wrote the theatre piece Dunkel lockende Welt for the Munich Kammerspiele in 2006, and, in 2008, the Singspiel Furcht und Zittern. The latter forms the first part of the trilogy Die Polizei. Its second part, Meine Biene. Eine Schneise (with music by Franui) was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival and performed there in 2012, and its third part, Gabe/Gift, was first performed in 2013 at the Cologne Schauspiel directed by Anna Viebrock.

In 2002, at the invitation of Brigitte Fassbaender, he wrote his first opera libretto, Häftling von Mab (composer: Eduard Demetz), for the Tyrol Landestheater. He followed this up in 2010 with Wüstenbuch for Beat Furrer, first performed at Theater Basel and at the Vienna Festwochen in a production by Christoph Marthaler, and also Buch Asche for Klaus Lang. As artistic director of the Schwetzingen Festival, Georges Delnon commissioned him to write librettos for the operas Bluthaus (2011), Thomas (2013) and Koma (2016) by Georg Friedrich Haas, and for Hèctor Parras’s opera Wilde (2015). Further opera librettos followed for Arnulf Herrmann’s Der Mieter for the Frankfurt Opera (2017), Heinz Holliger’s Lunea, written for Christian Gerhaher and first performed at the Zurich Opera House (2018), Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee, first staged by Claus Guth at the Berlin State Opera (2019), Hèctor Parra’s Les Bienveillantes directed by Calixto Bieito for Opera Vlaanderen (2019) and Vito Žuraj’s Blühen for Frankfurt Opera (2023). Most recently, he completed Liebesgesang for Georg Friedrich Haas, which was premiered at Bühnen Bern at the end of May 2024 in a production by Tobias Kratzer. He is currently working on Im Dickicht for Isabel Mundry.

Händl Klaus has won numerous awards. The operas Koma, Lunea and Blühen were acclaimed in the specialist magazine Opernwelt as ‘world premieres of the year’, he won the Canton of Bern literature prize for the libretto for Thomas, and his radio play Zrugg (2022), written in Tyrolean dialect, won a German Record Critics’ Annual Award. He has also received the Feldkircher Lyrikpreis, the Gert Jonke Prize, and the Grand Prize of the Edition Haus am Gern for his complete works.

As a filmmaker he has created the feature films März (2008) and Kater (Tomcat, 2016), which have won awards including the Silver Leopard of the Locarno Film Festival and the Berlinale’s Teddy Award.

Händl Klaus is represented by Rowohlt Theaterverlag Hamburg.