Joachim Klein
Lighting Designer
© Wolfgang Runkel
Joachim Klein, a lighting designer and lighting master at Oper Frankfurt since 1994, became head of the lighting department in 2013. This season he works on new productions of Henze's Der Prinz von Homburg, Magnard's Guercœur, Reimann's L'invisible and Handel's Alcina. He recently lit new productions of Cimarosa's L’italiana in Londra, Nielsen's Maskerade, Schönberg / Frank Martin's Warten auf Heute (Waiting for Today) / Jedermann, Rossini's Bianca e Falliero, Die Zauberflöte and Orlando (both directed by Ted Huffman), Die Meistersinger (Johannes Erath), Salome and this production of Handel's Hercules (Barrie Kosky) and Rudi Stephan's Die Erste Menschen (The First People), which was performed for the first time at Oper Frankfurt in 1920, directed by Tobias Kratzer. These were followed, in 2023/24, by Don Pasquale (first seen at the Tirol Festival in Erl 2022), Le nozze di Figaro, Le Grand Macabre, Aida and Giulio Cesare in Egitto. He also teamed up with Barrie Kosky for new productions of Die Fledermaus at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and Il trittico for De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam. Other productions for the company have included Tri sestry, I puritani, La forza del destino, Rodelinda, Król Roger, Handel's Rinaldo (Bockenheimer Depot), the world premiere of Arnulf Hermann's Der Mieter / The Tenant (commissioned by Oper Frankfurt), Capriccio, Aus einem Totenhaus / From the House of the Dead, Manon Lescaut and Salome. Guest engagements, with directors including Peter Konwitschny, Christof Loy, Claus Guth, Harry Kupfer, David Hermann, Willy Decker and Johannes Erath have taken him to places including the Salzburg Easter Festival, Graz (La traviata, Pique Dame and Elektra), Göteborg (Lucrezia Borgia), the Hamburg State Opera (The Cunning Little Vixen), Teatro Real in Madrid (Werther) and English National Opera in London (La traviata). Other productions have included Riehm's Sirenen, L’incoronazione di Poppea, Cesti's L’Orontea, Euryanthe, Martinů's Drei Einakter/Three One Act Operas, Lachenmann's Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern / Little Match Girl, Verdi's Stiffelio, Handel's Radamisto and Carmen at Oper Frankfurt, Der feurige Engel/The Firey Angel (directed by Barrie Kosky) at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and Un ballo in maschera (directed by Johannes Erath). He received a British »Knight of Illumination Award« in 2014 for his lighting of Oper Frankfurt's Kosky production of Herzog Blaubarts Burg / Bluebeard's Castle and another in 2016, for Saul (Kosky again) at the Glyndebourne Festival, for which he also received the 2017 Australian Helpmann Award for best lighting design.