Reinhard Schau
German opera director
Reinhard Schau (8 September 1935 – 9 March 2019) was a German opera director and lecturer.
Life
Born in Ełk, Schau studied opera direction with Heinz Rückert at the Staatliche Hochschule für Theater und Musik Halle (1954/55) and with Carl Riha at the Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" in (East-)Berlin (1955–59).
Until 1964, he worked as a director at the Landesbühnen Sachsen in Radebeul, where he collaborated with the dramaturge Dieter Härtwig. From 1964 to 1969, Schau was opera director at the Mecklenburgisches Staatstheater Schwerin, then opera director of the Theater Magdeburg until 1977. He staged the premieres of Dieter Nowka's opera Die Erbschaft (1960), Bill Brook and Old Fritz by Rainer Kunad (both 1965), Zimmermann's Weiße Rose (1968) and Die zweite Entscheidung (1970); the German language premiere of Prokofiev's The Story of a Real Man (1963) and the first GDR performances of Stravinski's The Rake’s Progress and Dantons Tod by Gottfried von Einem (1967).
In 1977, Schau was offered a position at the Hochschule für Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar, where he headed the opera school until 2001. In addition, he held a deputy professorship for scene studies and music theatre. In 1982, he received his doctorate from the Martin Luther University of Halle with a dissertation on singing training in the GDR. Between 1982 and 1988 he published articles in the professional journal Theater der Zeit. Schau initiated the foundation of the " Fördervereins der Musikhochschule Weimar" of the Weimar Academy of Music in 1991, which he subsequently also headed.
After his retirement, the university appointed him as its honorary senator.
The public source identifies “Reinhard Schau” as german opera director. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Reinhard, Schau and German.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 1, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q53997764. VIAF identifies the subject as 47359745. The Library of Congress control number is n2007037977. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1935, 2019, 1954 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reinhard Schau” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.