Martin Gebhardt

Biography

Studied in Hamburg. After his graduation, he worked as a lighting designer at John Neumeier's Hamburg Ballet. In 2002-12 cooperated with choreographer Heinz Spoerli, the artistic director of Ballet Zurich then. Since 2012, has been the head of the lighting department at the The Zurich Opera House.

Created lighting plot for the productions by Jürgen Flimm, Grischa Asagaroff, Matthias Hartmann, David Pountney, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, Damiano Michieletto, Achim Freyer and Christoph Marthaler and other famous directors.

In 2012, at the Salzburg Festival, he was the lighting designer at the production of the opera La Bohème by G. Puccini (directed by D. Michieletto) and the ballet by Heinz Spoerli Death and the Maiden to the music by F. Schubert in the new edition. Worked with Christoph Marthaler and set designer Anna Viebrock at the realisation of the performances: Sale (2012, a project by C. Marthaler to the music by G.F. Handel, The Zurich Opera House), Viaggio a Reims by G. Rossini (2015, Opera Zurich), Lulu by A. Berg (2017, Staatsoper Hamburg).

Cooperated with a variety of famous choreographers: Patrice Bart, Alexei Ratmansky, Wayne McGregor, Marco Goecke, Benoit Favre and others.
Created the lighting design for the ballet Swan Lake by P. Tchaikovsky in the new edition by A. Ratmansky. (2015, Ballet Zurich).

Working with C. Spuck, the artistic director of Ballet Zurich, in the same theatre, he collaborates with him regularly.
He was involved in the realisation of his ballets in Zurich and then their renewal on the stages of other theatres:

Der Sandmann to the music by to the music by R. Schumann, A. Schnittke, M. Donner, based on the novella by E.T.A. Hoffmann (2016)
Sonnet to the music by P. Glass, based on the sonnets by W. Shakespeare (2014)
Anna Karenina to the music by S. Rachmaninov and R. Lutosławski (2014, a co-production with The Norwegian National Ballet; 2016, The Norwegian National Ballet, Oslo; 2016, the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Moscow Academic Music Theatre; 2017, the Korean National Ballet, Seoul; 2017, the Bavarian State Ballet, Munich)
Requiem to the music by G. Verdi (2016, a co-production with The Zurich Opera House)
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King to the music by P. Tchaikovsky (2017)
Winterreise to the music by H. Zender and F. Shubert (2018)

Also created the lighting design for the productions by Edward Clug at Ballet Zurich: Chamber Minds to the music by M. Lazar (2015), The Rite of Spring by I. Stravinsky (2016), Faust-ballet by M. Lazar based on the tragedy of the same name by J.W. Goethe (2018).

For the first time at the Bolshoi Theatre, he worked on the production of E. Clug’s ballet Petrushka by I. Stravinsky (2018).