JULIUS THEODOR SEMMELMANN studied stage and costume design in the class of Hans Schavernoch at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. In addition to his studies, he assisted set and costume designers Frank Philipp Schlössmann, Heike Scheele and Rebecca Ringst at the Graz Opera, Dresden Semperoper, Frankfurt Opera, Munich State Opera, as well as at the Salzburg and Bayreuth Festivals. He has worked on productions by Barrie Kosky, Stefan Herheim and Calixto Bieito.
His first individual works in Graz (Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges and L’heure espagnole, Purcell’s King Arthur, etc.) were followed by Offenbach’s Hoffmanns Erzählungen für Kinder at the Cologne Opera, Wagner’s Tannhäuser at the Saarbrücken State Theater and Verdi’s Rigoletto at the Krefeld Theater. In the 2017/18 season, he created the set for Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen for children at the Bayreuth Festival and premiered Paulus Hochgatere’'s Böhm at the Graz Drama Theater, as well as guest performances at the Bregenz Festival, Munich Residence Theater and Vienna Castle Theater. In 2020, he created the set design for Richard Strauss’s Salome directed by Nikolaus Habian at the Vienna Theater and Verdi’s Il trovatore directed by Togo Sugao at the Staatstheater Saarbrucken. His most recent works include set and costume design for the opera Immer noch Loge at the Bayreuth Festival, Offenbach’s Hoffmanns Erzählungen at the Bremerhaven Theater, Rossini’s Othello and the opera Krabat directed by Manuel Schmitt at the Gelsenkirchen Regional Music Theater.
In 2013, Julius Theodor Semmelmann was awarded the Bayreuth Scholarship by the International Wiener Wagner Society. From 2015 to 2017 he was a laureate of the Musiktheater Heute Academy Scholarship founded by the Deutsche Bank Foundation.
Photo: Lupi Spuma