Prof. Waltraud Lehner

The Munich-based director focuses her 60 productions on world premieres and first performances, and stages productions at theatres in Berlin, Heidelberg, Koblenz, Lübeck and Munich, at the State Operas of Hanover and Stuttgart, and repeatedly as part of the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre.

Waltraud Lehner is a winner of the European Opera Direction Prize, has been awarded the Chamber Opera Prize by Music Theatre Now, and has been nominated several times for the Opernwelt ‘Production of the Year’ award. Following engagements at the State Operas of Hanover and Stuttgart and teaching posts at the University of Music and Theatre in Stuttgart, Waltraud Lehner has been a professor at the HMTM since 2013.

As head of the opera school’s practical training programme for the Bachelor’s degree in singing, she founded the Musiktheater im Reaktor in 2014, which presents a new production in the Reaktorhalle every year during the summer term. Changing collaborative partners both within and outside the University of Music and Theatre include, amongst others, the University Symphony Orchestra (HSO Munich), Institut 8 for Historical Performance Practice, the composition classes at the University of Music and Theatre, the Madrigal Choir and the Ballet Academy of the HMTM, the »Pinakotheken«, and, on several occasions, the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre.