About
French lighting designer Jean Kalman made his Royal Opera debut in 1994 on La traviata and has since lit Giulio Cesare, The Turn of the Screw, Dialogues des Carmélitesand Orfeo for The Royal Opera and Rushes – Fragments of a Lost Story for The Royal Ballet. He returns in the 2018/19 Season for La traviata and Billy Budd.
Kalman was born in Paris. He has collaborated with directors including Pierre Audi, Peter Brook, Robert Carsen, Rufus Norris and Deborah Warner. Opera credits include Thebans, The Magic Flute, The Death of Klinghoffer, Eugene Onegin, Death in Venice, Between Worlds (world premiere) and Messiah (English National Opera), Medée, The Tempest, Parsifal, La Juive and Tristan und Isolde (Dutch National Opera), Wagner Dream (Welsh National Opera), Guillaume Tell, Attila, Eugene Onegin and Macbeth(Metropolitan Opera, New York), Tosca, Les Contes d’Hoffmann and Salome (Paris), Die Zauberflöte (Aix-en-Provence), Penthesilea (Strasbourg and Brussels), Hänsel und Gretel (Vienna State Opera, Dutch National Opera), Don Carlos (Bolshoi Theatre), Billy Budd (Teatro Real, Madrid and Rome) and Dialogues des Carmélites (La Scala, Milan, Oviedo, Antwerp, Nice and Japan).
Kalman’s theatre credits include King Lear (Old Vic), The Low Road, Blasted, Lucky Dog(Royal Court), Festen (Almeida Theatre, West End), Cabaret, The Beautiful Game, By the Bog of Cats (West End), John Gabriel Borkman (Dublin, New York), The Year of Magical Thinking (Los Angeles National Theatre), Mother Courage, The Cherry Orchard, White Chameleon, The Mahabharatra, Richard III (National Theatre) and Macbeth, The Crucible, Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar (Royal Shakespeare Company). His many accolades include Olivier Awards (Best Lighting Design) for Richard III and White Chameleon and an Evening Standard Award (Best Lighting) for Festen.