Biography

Born in Paris, the French-German director Béatrice Lachaussée studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, before graduating in Opera Direction from Vienna’s University for Music and Performing Arts. She worked at renowned European opera houses as an apprentice such as Theater an der Wien, Wiener Staatsoper, La Monnaie, assisting stage directors like Olivier Py, Carlos Wagner, Christof Loy, Andrea Breth, Jérôme Deschamps, Torsten Fischer. She graduated by directing Dido and Aeneas from Henry Purcell in 2012.

Šimon Voseček’s new opera Biedermann und die Brandstifter ("The Fire Raisers") marked her directing debut for the Neue Oper Wien in 2013. She won the Götz Friedrich Studio Prize (’best chamber opera’) for Wolfgang Rihm’s Jakob Lenz, which was staged in a church with Cologne Opera in 2014. She directed Leoš Janaček’s Diary of One who Disappeared and Holst’s Sâvitri in the Kolumba Museum of Cologne in 2015. Since then she worked in several opera houses in Europe, directing Béatrice et Bénédict by Hector Berlioz at the Opera of Lucerne, The bartered bride by Bedřich Smetana at the Opera of Aachen and opening the season 2016/2017 at the Opera of Cologne with two operas from Maurice Ravel L’heure espagnole and L’enfant et les sortilèges. Recently she directed Madama Butterfly from Puccini at the Stadttheater of Bremerhaven and Pulcinella by Stravinsky adapted for young audience at the Philharmonic in Luxemburg.

For 2020 she is invited to stage La Cenerentola at the Theater Osnabrück and La Voix humaine/ l’heure espagnole at Opera Zuid and Nouvel Opera de Fribourg. She collaborates with composer Mathilde Wantenaar, together they create A song for the moon at DNOA in Amsterdam.

Béatrice Lachaussée recently worked with illustrator Grégoire Pont as video designer for her staging of Hänsel and Gretel at the Opera of Cologne.