Michael Sturminger
Michael Sturminger was born in Vienna in 1963, where he studied directing and screenwriting at the University of Music and Performing Arts. Since 1990, he has worked as a freelance theatre, musical theatre and film director, as well as an author of theatre texts, libretti and screenplays. From 2014 to 2022, he was artistic director of the Perchtoldsdorf Summer Festival. From 2018 to 2023, he taught as a university professor of musical theatre direction and dramatic performance at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
His work has taken him to the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, the National Theatre in Taipei, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Theater an der Wien, the Zurich Opera House, the Aalto Theatre in Essen, the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz in Munich, the Vienna State Opera, the Vienna Volksoper, and the opera houses in Wiesbaden, Graz and Cologne. Michael Sturminger has been a guest at the Salzburg Easter Festival, the Cherry Orchard Festival Moscow, the Wien Modern Festival, the Schwetzingen Festival, the Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, the Prague Spring Festival, the White Nights Festival St. Petersburg, the Sydney Festival, the Toronto Festival, the Grafenegg Festival and the Bregenz and Salzburg Festivals. His Salome at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt was awarded the Austrian Music Theatre Prize for ‘Best Overall Opera Production’ in 2018, and Bernhard Lang's new opera Hiob, to which Sturminger contributed the libretto and staging, was awarded the Austrian Music Theatre Prize in 2024.
In 2006, Sturminger wrote the libretto for Bernhard Lang's musical theatre piece I Hate Mozart and directed its world premiere at the Theater an der Wien. He also wrote the libretto for Reigen for Bernhard Lang. (premiered in Schwetzingen in 2014, at the Bregenz Festival in 2019) Commissioned by the Bregenz Festival, Sturminger wrote the libretto for HK Gruber's opera Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (Tales from the Vienna Woods) and directed the world premiere at the Bregenz Festival in 2014 and at the Theater an der Wien in 2015.
He has been working with actor John Malkovich for many years. Their previous projects, written by Sturminger and produced in collaboration with Martin Haselböck, include The Infernal Comedy, The Giacomo Variations and Just Call Me God, which premiered at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg in 2017. To date, these three projects have been performed in more than 90 cities from Sydney to Santiago de Chile, from Toronto to Tbilisi and New York. The Infernal Comedy was also on tour again in the summer of 2022, 2023 and 2024 and could be seen in the European Capital of Culture Timisoara, in Varna, Madrid, Wrozlaw, Gran Canaria, Istanbul, Copenhagen and Arhus and other cities. In 2024, Sturminger created his fourth musical theatre production, Their Master's Voice, with John Malkovich and Cecilia Bartoli at the Monte Carlo Opera, with guest performances at the Versailles Festival and the Vienna State Opera.
Casanova Variations, the cinema version of The Giacomo Variations, was shown at numerous international festivals and won two Austrian Film Awards and a Golden Romy in 2015, while the feature film Hurensohn was screened at the Max Ophüls Festival, among others. In 2008, Sturminger accompanied Cecilia Bartoli during the recording and research for her Maria album for the documentary film Malibran Rediscovered and the concert film The Barcelona Concert. In 2018, Michael Sturminger shot the ARD television film Toulouse based on a screenplay by David Schalko, with Catrin Striebeck and Matthias Brandt in the leading roles. In 2021/22, Sturminger realised his comedy screenplay Die Unschuldsvermutung (The Presumption of Innocence), inspired by lies and intrigues at the Salzburg Festival, in an ORF/ARD feature film with Ulrich Tukur.
Michael Sturminger made his directorial debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2006 with Mozart's Il sogno di Scipione. In 2017, he was responsible for the production of Salvatore Sciarrino's chamber opera Lohengrin at the Salzburg Easter Festival and for the new production of Jedermann with Tobias Moretti in the title role at the Salzburg Festival. This was followed in 2018 by Giacomo Puccini's Tosca with Christian Thielemann and Anja Harteros at the Easter Festival, a production that was restaged at the Salzburg Festival in the summer of 2021 with Anna Netrebko in the title role. From 2018 to 2020, Sturminger revised his Jedermann with numerous new ensemble members, followed in the summer of 2021 by a fundamental new production with Lars Eidinger as Jedermann, Verena Altenberger as Buhlschaft and Edith Clever as Death. At the Dmitri Hvorostovsky Festival in Krasnoyarsk (Siberia) in October 2021, Michael Sturminger staged Mozart's Don Giovanni with Samuel Dale Johnson and Luca Pisaroni. With Michael Maertens in the title role, Sturminger presented his third production of the material with a new Jedermann at the 2023 festival. In autumn 2023, Sturminger staged Richard Strauss' Salome in Daegu, Korea. Sturminger is currently working with Bernhard Lang on two new opera librettos, with John Malkovich on a feature film based on Just Call Me God, and with author and historian Philipp Blom on a project about Emma and Victor Adler.
