Regine Palmai

Regine Palmai was born in Halle (Saale), attained her university entrance qualification in piano and studied Musicology. Her first engagement was as Assistant Director at the Halle Opera House, where she was involved in some of Peter Konwitschny’s exceptional Handel productions, amongst others. She then took up a position as Dramaturg at the Oper Leipzig, where she subsequently became Deputy Head of Dramaturgy. She worked as Head Dramaturg at the Deutsche Oper Berlin under Artistic Director Udo Zimmermann from 2001, after which she moved to Bern, Switzerland in the same position in 2007. Here she worked on Johannes Erath’s award-winning production of Massenet’s “Cendrillon” (Götz Friedrich Prize), as well as the winning production of the 5th European Opera Directing Prize, amongst others. In 2001 she worked as production dramaturg for Cologne Opera’s staging of Prokofiev’s opera “War and Peace” (Nicolas Brieger/Michael Sanderling). In addition, she writes specialist articles for the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” newspaper, and has worked for the Swiss Radio and Television Corporation (SRF). As production dramaturg, she has worked alongside Ruth Berghaus, George Tabori, Achim Freyer, Peter Konwitschny, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Sebastian Baumgarten, Sven Eric Bechtolf, Ursel and Karl-Ernst Herrmann, Dale Duesing, Bernd Mottl, Immo Karaman and Mariame Clément, as well as being involved in numerous first stagings, including the operas “Dienstag” and “Freitag” from Stockhausen’s “Licht” cycle. In addition, she has worked with conductors such as Marc Albrecht, Roland Böer, Gabriele Ferro, Fabio Luisi, Marc Minkowski, Christian Thielemann, Lothar Zagrosek and Alberto Zedda. Regine Palmai was Head Dramaturg (Opera) at the State Theatre of Wiesbaden from 2014 to 2019.