Heike Scheele

Heike Scheele studied stage and costume design at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna with Prof. Erich Wonder and was awarded the Koloman Moser Prize on the occasion of her graduation. In 1989 she began her career as a freelance artist in spoken theatre, musicals, operetta and opera. From 1999, the 1958-born artist regularly worked intensively with Stefan Herheim. With her stage design for Herheim's directorial concept of Wagner's "Parsifal" at the Bayreuth Festival, she was voted Stage Designer of the Year by the trade journal Opernwelt in 2009 and nominated for the German theatre prize DER FAUST. In 2013, she received the Austrian Music Theatre Award for her set design for Bizet's Carmen in Graz. In 2016 she was nominated for the International Opera Awards in the field of design. In addition to other directors, she has regularly worked with Johannes Erath on numerous stage spaces since 2015, including Verdi's "Un ballo in maschera" at the Bavarian State Opera, Offenbach's "Les Contes d'Hoffmann" at the Semperoper Dresden and Berlioz's "Les Troyens" at the Cologne Opera. She has also designed sets at La Scala in Milan and the Hamburg State Opera. Barrie Kosky also engaged her as stage designer for his spectacular production of Handel's "Xerxes".
At the Deutsche Oper am Rhein she recently designed the stage and costume design for Weinberg's "Mazel Tov! We Congratulate!", Blacher's "Romeo and Juliet", Wagner's "Tristan and Isolde" as well as the stage for Demis Volpi's world premiere "Closed Games" and most recently "Giselle". With Johannes Erath, she is developing the set for the world premiere of "Septembersonate" by Manfred Trojahn here in the 2023/24 season.