Stephan Grögler (Franco-Swiss-Austrian)
Stage Director and Set Designer  June 2025

“His productions are marked by inventiveness, a keen sense of theatrical imagery, and the human precision of his direction of actors.”
— Alain Perroux (current Director of the Grand Théâtre de Genève), Theaterlexikon Schweiz

Born in Bern, of Austrian origin, Stephan Grögler grew up at the crossroads of vastly different aesthetic perspectives.

Raised in a Steiner education system that encouraged a holistic and hands-on approach (carpentry, pottery, sewing, building musical instruments, etc.), yet steeped in 19th-century values, he staged his first contemporary “project” at the age of 15 through a directing internship at the Stadttheater in Bern.

This experience confirmed for the teenager—who loved going to the theater alone and crafting miniature set designs from shoeboxes and scraps of wood salvaged from his neighbor the violin maker—that his future lay in the performing arts.

Stephan Grögler’s uniqueness developed through constant family back-and-forths between Vienna and Switzerland. With a mother who was a piano teacher, a father who worked for NASA and invented thermoluminescence dating for ancient pottery, and his own training as a violinist that led him to play in a youth orchestra, his upbringing was anything but conventional.

While studying opera direction at the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, he multiplied internships and encounters—with George Delnon in Lucerne, Pet Halmen (a collaborator of Jean-Pierre Ponnelle), Feruccio Soleri, among others.

A defining moment was his internship at the Salzburg Festival in the very year of Karajan’s death.

His early professional career took him from the Opera of Lisbon to those in Nice, Essen, and Antwerp, where he worked both as an assistant director and set designer assistant.
At the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, he collaborated with Alfredo Arias, Jorge Lavelli, and Robert Carsen as assistant, stage manager, or stage director on productions such as The Rake’s Progress, Les Indes Galantes, The Abduction from the Seraglio, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

In 1998, Jean-Pierre Brosmann appointed him resident director at the Opéra National de Lyon.

From then on, he began directing and designing his own productions for a wide array of works:
La Bohème, La Traviata, Dido and Aeneas, Roland, Le Nozze di Figaro, The Rape of Lucretia, Medea Material, Bluebeard’s Castle, La Cenerentola, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Der Kaiser von Atlantis, Tancredi, Samson et Dalila, Don Pasquale, …
as well as operettas such as Die Lustige Witwe, Orpheus in the Underworld, The Threepenny Opera, …

His artistic vision, enriched by his dual experience as director and scenographer, has led him to collaborate with a range of prestigious and diverse venues:
New National Theatre Tokyo, Semperoper Dresden, NCPA Beijing, The Santa Fe Opera, Opéra National de Lyon, Teatro Comunale Bologna, Landestheater Salzburg, Villa Medici, Das Theater im Künstlerhaus Wien…

Driven by a passion for hands-on collaboration with performers, technicians, and production teams, he has engaged in both contemporary creations and reinterpretations of great classics for institutions such as:
La Monnaie in Brussels, Greek National Opera in Athens, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Jean Moulin Resistance Museum, Teatro alla Scala di Milano, Mariinsky Theatre, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía in Valencia, Reitschule Bern, Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Theater Biel Solothurn, and the Vienna State Opera…

The distinctiveness of Stephan Grögler’s work stems from numerous impactful collaborations—whether in stage design (Karl-Ernst Hermann, Alfredo Arias, Robert Carsen), actor direction (Klaus Michael Grüber, Alain Françon, Hideo Kanze), or overall aesthetics (Hiroshi Teshigahara).
He has also sustained a long-standing artistic partnership with Yannis Kokkos, supporting his projects worldwide.

Collaborations with creative figures such as Arne Quinze, Karl Lagerfeld, Jennifer Crupi, Fernando Botero, Daan Roosegaarde, and Roy Krejberg have honed his acute sense of design.

This sensibility has also led him into high-profile event productions with the Marcadé agency, for prestigious brands including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Ungaro, and the Bal de la Rose in Monaco…

These many experiences culminated in Stephan Grögler founding operAct—a space for experimentation and action.

The spirit of this workshop-style initiative is anchored in two guiding principles:
“Stage direction is the art of embracing constraints to create unique projects,” and
“Today’s opera must reclaim the strength of its exceptional craftsmanship.”

This is his way of bringing opera into the present—where inventiveness and technology intertwine with contemporary art installations and chamber music, cross-disciplinary creators (design, cinema, music, fashion), and economic realities…

By staying closely connected with younger generations—creating operas specifically for and with them—Stephan Grögler has shaped a distinctive approach:

“Stage direction must forge an absolute and sincere vision that embraces all creative energies within a production. It must strive, by any means necessary, to transmit and build immediacy and intimacy—to create a visceral, almost physical, connection between the audience, the performers, and the music.”

                                                                                                                                                                               Stephan Grögler

Languages: French, German, Italian, English