The stage and costume designer as well as director Jürgen Rose is being honored with the Lifetime Achievement and Honorary Award from the Opera! Awards. “This artist has touched almost every craft—from sets and costumes to dramaturgy—and has contributed to more than 300 operas, plays, ballets, and operettas, and has even directed productions himself,” the Berlin-based jury announced. “He consistently hit the mark as a perfectionist within the team. He was loved, feared—and a defining influence for an entire generation of students.”
“A lifelong Gesamtkunstwerk that defies categorization,” the jury concluded. The versatile talent landed his first engagement in 1959/60 as a stage and costume designer as well as an actor in Ulm. From 1961 to 2001 he worked as a costume and scenic designer at Munich’s Kammerspiele, before, according to his résumé, he went on to work for numerous prestigious houses in Germany and abroad. From 1973 to 2000 he also taught as a professor of stage design at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart. He has also maintained a close connection with the Bavarian State Opera in Munich.
The award will be presented to Rose on February 23 during a festive ceremony at the Regensburg Theatre, which itself will be celebrating its designation as Opera House of the Year 2025. The Opera! Awards describe themselves as Germany’s only publicly awarded international opera prize.
Marcy Ellerton
