Claus Guth
director

Claus Guth was born in Frankfurt am Main and studied philosophy, German studies, and theatre studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University, as well as theatre and opera directing at the University of Music in Munich. Since 1990, Guth has worked as a freelance director, focusing primarily on music theatre.

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His Mozart productions at the Salzburg Festival—particularly the Da Ponte cycle—attracted international attention. Claus Guth has worked at major international opera houses, including La Scala in Milan, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, the Vienna State Opera, Zurich Opera House, the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden, the Bavarian State Opera, the Bayreuth Festival, the Metropolitan Opera, the Park Avenue Armory, the Opéra National de Paris, Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam, Teatro Real in Madrid, the Glyndebourne Festival, Teatro San Carlo, the Bolshoi Theatre, and the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence.

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For his productions of Pelléas et Mélisande and Daphne at Oper Frankfurt, he was awarded the prestigious FAUST Prize. In addition, his staging of Jenůfa at the Royal Opera House received the 2022 Olivier Award for Best Production, and Bluthaus at the Bavarian State Opera received Austria’s 2022 Music Theatre Prize for Best International Production. In 2023 he was honored with the Oper! Award for Best Direction. In November 2025 he received the International Opera Award as Director of the Year.

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Guth’s expertise in staging the operas of Richard Wagner deserves special mention. His remarkable productions include Lohengrin at La Scala in Milan, Tannhäuser at the Vienna State Opera, Tristan und Isolde at Zurich Opera House, and the Ring des Nibelungen at the Hamburg State Opera.

He has directed a number of world premieres, such as Berenice by Michael Jarrell at the Opéra National de Paris, Violetter Schnee by Beat Furrer (Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden), Lullaby Experience by Pascal Dusapin (Frankfurt LAB), Heart Chamber by Chaya Czernowin (Deutsche Oper Berlin), Czernowin’s Pnima, Ins Innere (Munich Biennale), Peter Ruzicka’s Celan (Semperoper Dresden), Bluthaus by Georg Friedrich Haas (Bavarian State Opera), and Il Viaggio, Dante by Pascal Dusapin (Festival d’Aix-en-Provence).

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Beyond this, Claus Guth has repeatedly developed original concepts and projects outside the traditional opera repertoire, including his collaborations with composer Helmut Oehring (Unsichtbar Land, Aschemond), Samson, a Rameau pasticcio created with conductor Raphaël Pichon, the Schubert project Doppelgänger at the Park Avenue Armory in New York with Jonas Kaufmann, and, not least, the musical Cabaret at the Residenztheater in Munich. 

Continuing this focus on works beyond the operatic repertoire, he will in the coming years work on, among other projects, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion and Haydn’s Creation.