Christian Schmidt was born in Coburn and studied at the Vienna Academy of Arts and the Salzburg Mozarteum. Since 1992, he has regularly collaborated with Claus Guth. His credits include sets and costumes for The Flying Dutchman at the Bayreuth Festival, The Ring of the Nibelung at the Hamburg State Opera, the Mozart/Da Ponte cycle, and Fidelio at the Salzburg Festival; Aschemond or The Fairy Queen at the Berlin State Opera, Lohengrin at La Scala in Milan, The Mastersingers of Nuremberg and Lucio Silla at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, and Lazarus. , Orlando, and Saül at Theater an der Wien; Puccini's Triptych; Pelléas et Mélisande; Daphne; Der Rosenkavalier; Die lustige Witwe at the Frankfurt Opera; Parsifal at the Zurich Opera; Simon Boccanegra at the Hamburg State Opera; Rodelinda at the Teatro Real in Madrid; La clemenza di Tito at the Glyndebourne Festival; and Khovantchina at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin. He has worked with Hans Neuenfels (Le Roi Candaule at the Vienna Volksoper, L'Enlèvement au sérail at the Stuttgart Opera, and La Dame de pique at the Salzburg Festival), Christof Loy (La Veuve joyeuse in Ghent, Charodeyka at Theater an der Wien, and Les Capulet et les Montaigu in Zurich), Amélie Niermeyer (Otello at the Bayerische Staatsoper in Munich and La Vie parisienne at the Stadttheater in Bern), and Christian Spuck (Orphée et Eurydice and Roméo et Juliette in Stuttgart). , La Forza del destino in Amsterdam and London, and Andreas Homoki (La Petite Renarde rusée at Berlin's Komische Oper). He has also worked with Amélie Niermeyer (Otello at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper and La Vie parisienne at Bern's Stadttheater) and choreographer Christian Spuck (Orphée et Eurydice and Roméo et Juliette in Stuttgart).Opernwelt magazine named him “Set Designer of the Year” in 2003 and “Costume Designer of the Year” in 2005 and 2012. In 2006, he received the Rolf Mares Award from the Hamburg State Opera for Simon Boccanegra. For the 2025–2026 season, he is designing sets for Mitridate, re di Ponto in Frankfurt and Don Giovanni in Berlin.At the Opéra national de Paris: Rigoletto (2016), Lohengrin (2017), Bérénice (2018), and Don Giovanni (2023).

Christian SchmidtSet designer