Johan Engels (South Africa)

Set Designer

HGO Performances: Chorus! (2009).

About the Artist: Engels studied fine arts and design at the University of Pretoria. He designed extensively for opera, ballet, and theatre in South Africa, where recent credits include Boys in the Photograph with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton (2010) at Johannesburg’s Mandela Theatre, Showboat, and Die Fledermaus. Current and recent work includes Faust (Paris Opera), Die Passagierin (Bregenz Festival 2010 with English National Opera, Poland’s National Theatre, and Tel Aviv, Israel), and Thaïs (Göteborg Opera), which is to be revived in Helsinki and Valencia. He has also designed Il Trittico, Sancta Susannah, and Von Heute Auf Morgen for Opera de Lyon; Mathis der Maler at Theater an der Wien; and Lulu for Welsh National Opera. In 2013 and 2014, Engels will design the set for Der Zauberflöte on a floating stage at Bregenz Festival. Collaborations with Director David Pountney include Maskarade at the Bregenz Festival and Royal Opera House, Chorus! at Houston Grand Opera, Osud at Vienna State Opera, Eight Little Greats for Opera North, Smetana’s The Devil’s Wall in Prague, Turandot at the Salzburg Festival, Anything Goes for Grange Park Opera, L’Etoile and Agrippina in Zürich, and Khovanshchina for Welsh National Opera, among others. Additional productions include both Artaxerxes, (Royal Opera House) and A Midsummer Nights Dream (Opera North) with Dir. Martin Duncan, Cinderella (Zurich Ballet), Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 (Vienna State Ballet), Macbeth and Romeo and Juliette (Opera North), Beatrice and Benedict (Chicago Opera Theatre), and Otello (Parma, Monte Carlo, Los Angeles). Engels also designed costumes for the Vienna New Year’s Day Concert in 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004, and 2010.