General director at the music theater in Gelsenkirchen

Designated General director at of the Saarländisches Staatstheater Saarbrücken from the 2025/2026 season

Michael Schulz studied drama and opera direction at the College of Music and Dramatic Arts in Hamburg. He was Director at the State Theatre in Kassel and from 1997 to 2001 Senior Director at the Aalto Music Theatre in Essen, followed by six years as Opera Director at the German National Theatre in Weimar, starting with the 2002/03 season.

In 1998 he was the first director to be awarded the Prize for Newcomer Directors by the then newly-founded, Berlin-based Götz-Friedrich Foundation, for his staging of Dialogues des Carmélites.

He has worked as a guest director at various venues, including the Semperoper Dresden, Oper Leipzig, Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Dusseldorf, Palace of Arts in Budapest, Eastern Festival Salzburg, Landestheater Linz, Staatstheater Kassel, Staatstheater Braunschweig, Komische Oper Berlin, the Aalto Music Theatre, at theatres in Bremen, Erfurt, Gelsenkirchen, Osnabrück and Neustrelitz, at the International Opera Festival in Miskolc (Hungary), the open-air Chamber Music Opera Festival at Rheinsberg Castle and the Music Festival of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

His repertoire covers works like Aribert Reimann’s Lear, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, Tosca, La Bohème and Il trittico, Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, Salome and Capriccio, Gounod’s Faust, Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, Giordano’s Andrea Chenier, Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Mozart’s Magic Flute, Weber’s Der Freischütz and Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, Verdi’s Don Carlos, Nabucco and La Traviata and Wagner´s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Parsifal, Tristan and Isolde and Der Ring des Nibelungen.

In the Wagner bicentenary year 2013, Michael Schulz has directed Parsifal at the Easter Festival in Salzburg under the musical direction of Christian Thielemann, which was performed as a Chines premiere at the Polytheatre in Beijing in October 2013. Also he directed Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg at Palace of Arts in Budapest under the musical direction of Adam Fischer. Der Ring des Nibelungen (Deutsches Nationaltheater Weimar) and Parsifal (Easter Festival Salzburg) has been released on DVD.

Above and beyond his work as a director, Michael Schulz acknowledges his artistic focus around the “Music in the Ruhr” (MiR) theatre in the industrial town of Gelsenkirchen, where he has been General Manager since 2008. In recent years he has staged Puccini’s La Bohème, Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Kurt Weill’s Dreigroschenoper, Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, Verdi´s La Traviata, La Forza del destino and Rigoletto, Janacek´s Jenufa and The Cunning Little Vixen, Britten´s A Midsummer Night´s Dream and Billy Budd, Wagner´s Das Rheingold and Tristan and Isolde with Catherine Foster and Thorsten Kerl.

2024-08-28