Lydia Steier is the artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale 2027–2029
Lydia Steier succeeds Ivo Van Hove, who served as artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale from 2024 to 2026. The supervisory board of Kultur Ruhr GmbH unanimously appointed her as the new artistic director in July 2025.
On 1 November 2026, Lydia Steier has taken over the role of artistic director of the Ruhrtriennale. The internationally acclaimed opera director will take up the post of artistic director through three festival seasons until 2029. Her first edition of the festival in 2027 will coincide with the Ruhrtriennale’s 25th anniversary.
Together with her team, Lydia Steier wants to continue building on the festival’s history and put encounters at the heart of her artistic direction. Her goal is to open spaces, enable participation, and further deepen the connection between the Ruhrtriennale and the diverse realities of life in the Ruhr region.
This festival is a love letter to art itself […] It is a great honour and an exciting privilege to direct the Ruhrtriennale in the year of its 25th anniversary.
Lydia Steier (born 1978 in Hartford, Connecticut, USA) is one of the most acclaimed directors of her generation. She is well known for her visually striking opera productions which approach sophisticated themes through unconventional formats and with a distinct passion for the grand theatrical experience.
After studying voice at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music in Ohio, she received a Fulbright scholarship to Germany where she has been working as an opera director ever since. In recent years, she has, among others, directed productions at the Opéra national de Paris (Salome, La Vestale), the Vienna State Opera (Tannhäuser), the Zurich Opera House (Der Rosenkavalier), the Frankfurt Opera (Aida, Oedipus Rex / Iolanta), the Theater an der Wien (Candide), the Semperoper Dresden (Les Troyens), the Salzburg Festival (Die Zauberflöte), and the Komische Oper Berlin (Giulio Cesare). Other engagements have taken her to Geneva, New York and Tokyo.
During the 2026–27 season, Lydia Steier will direct two new productions with Richard Strauss’s Elektra at the Zurich Opera House and Hector Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust at the Vienna State Opera.
Lydia Steier has received numerous awards for her work. In 2016, her production of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s Donnerstag aus Licht at the Theater Basel was awarded “Performance of the Year” by critics of the Opernwelt magazine. In 2024, the magazine named her “Director of the Year.” That same year, she received the prestigious OPER! Award for “Best Director,” for which she is also nominated this year. For her production of Medusa, which premiered in May 2026 at La Monnaie/De Munt, she has received another nomination in the “Best New Opera” category.