Mathis Nitschke (born 4 June 1973 in Munich) is a German composer, sound designer, director and producer. His work spans opera and music theatre, theatre and film music, spatial and interactive audio, and sound-based installations. He has collaborated internationally with artists and directors including Michel Houellebecq, Claus Guth, Robert Icke, Taryn Simon, Simon Rattle, Jonas Kaufmann and Raphaël Pichon.
Life and work
Nitschke studied classical guitar and fine arts before completing his studies in composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague with Gilius van Bergeijk, Richard Ayres and Clarence Barlow. From 2005 to 2007 he completed a postgraduate M.A. programme in Media and Communication at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, where he attended seminars with artists and thinkers including Heiner Goebbels, Jean-Luc Nancy, Michel Houellebecq, DJ Spooky, Mike Figgis, Peter Greenaway and The Brothers Quay.
Alongside his own music-theatre works, Nitschke has worked since the 1990s as a composer and sound designer for theatre, film and contemporary music. In 2008 he composed and produced the orchestral score for Houellebecq's directorial debut La Possibilité d’une Île, based on the writer's novel The Possibility of an Island.
In 2012 Nitschke collaborated with writer Jonas Lüscher and director Urs Schönebaum on the opera JETZT, premiered at the Opéra Orchestre national Montpellier. The work was nominated for "Premiere of the Year" in the 2013 critics' poll of the German opera magazine Opernwelt.
In 2014 the Opéra National de Montpellier premiered his HAPPY HAPPY, an "operatic song-cycle with party" for soprano, chorus, chamber orchestra and electronics.
From the mid-2010s, Nitschke developed a series of music-theatre works outside conventional theatre spaces. VIOLA (2015) was staged in a pharmacy in Munich.
VERGEHEN (2016) was a location-aware sound walk along the River Isar using smartphones, GPS and binaural audio. VERGEHEN was nominated in the Stage/Space/Costume category of the 2017 critics' poll of Die Deutsche Bühne.
In 2017 he created MAYA, a mixed-reality techno opera in the ruins of a former heating plant in Munich-Aubing. The work combined live performance and music with augmented reality, digital art and a mobile interface through which the audience explored an additional digital layer of the physical environment.
With Lure (2020), Nitschke explored musical and theatrical forms of interaction with learning computer systems.
Nitschke's work with spatial and interactive audio later included projects with the Munich Philharmonic. Inside MPhil (2019) allowed listeners equipped with a GPS-enabled smartphone and headphones to move virtually between the instruments of the orchestra.
In 2022 this approach was developed further in The Planets, an interactive 3D-audio soundwalk based on the Munich Philharmonic's recording of Gustav Holst's orchestral suite. The app uses immersive binaural technology and allows listeners to move freely through the spatialised orchestral sound field. Nitschke was responsible for overall artistic direction, dramaturgy, sound design and mixing.
International collaborations
Nitschke has worked extensively as a composer and sound designer in international opera, theatre and visual-art productions.
In 2023 he created original music and sound compositions for Doppelgänger, Claus Guth's theatrical staging of Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang with tenor Jonas Kaufmann and pianist Helmut Deutsch at the Park Avenue Armory in New York.
The production received extensive international press coverage, including reviews in The New York Times and the Financial Times.
In 2024 he designed the sound for Taryn Simon's installation Start Again the Lament at Cisternerne in Copenhagen.
The same year he was sound designer for Samson, a new work by director Claus Guth and conductor Raphaël Pichon, freely based on the lost opera project by Jean-Philippe Rameau and Voltaire, which received its world premiere at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence.
In 2025 Nitschke was responsible for sound in Robert Icke's production of Mozart's Don Giovanni at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.
In 2026 Kassandra, based on Christa Wolf's novella and directed by Nadja Loschky, premiered at Theater Bielefeld. Nitschke composed the music together with Stefan Behrisch.
Research and reception
Nitschke's work at the intersection of music theatre, public space and digital media has also been discussed in theatre scholarship. In 2018 theatre scholar David Roesner published "Found and framed. A conversation with composer and designer Mathis Nitschke" in the journal Theatre and Performance Design. The article focuses on VIOLA, VERGEHEN and MAYA and discusses questions of opera, space and design.
Selected works
Opera, music theatre and installations
2012: JETZT, opera, Opéra National de Montpellier 2014: HAPPY HAPPY, operatic song cycle, Opéra National de Montpellier 2015: VIOLA, music theatre in public space, Munich 2016: VERGEHEN, location-aware sound walk, Munich 2017: MAYA, mixed-reality techno opera, Munich 2019: Small Places, sound installation, Seoul 2020: Lure, music-theatre project involving learning systems 2022: The Planets, interactive 3D-audio soundwalk with the Munich Philharmonic 2023: Doppelgänger, original music and sound composition, Park Avenue Armory, New York 2024: Start Again the Lament, sound design for Taryn Simon, Cisternerne, Copenhagen 2024: Samson, sound design, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2025: Don Giovanni, sound, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2026: Kassandra, music with Stefan Behrisch, Theater Bielefeld
Film music
2008: The Possibility of an Island, directed by Michel Houellebecq 2017: Über Leben in Demmin, documentary film by Martin Farkas 2020: Der Sog des Krieges – Eine Familiengeschichte, documentary film by Christoph Boekel
Theatre and opera sound design
2009: Kleiner Mann, was nun?, directed by Luk Perceval, Münchner Kammerspiele 2023: Doppelgänger, directed by Claus Guth, Park Avenue Armory, New York 2024: Start Again the Lament, Taryn Simon, Cisternerne, Copenhagen 2024: Samson, directed by Claus Guth, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2025: Don Giovanni, directed by Robert Icke, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence
Teaching
Nitschke has taught seminars and workshops at the Musikhochschule Trossingen, the Hochschule der populären Künste Berlin and the University of Applied Sciences St. Pölten.
References
External links
Official website