Sudden death of lighting designer, 60
RIPGerman opera houses are sharing their shock at the unexpected death in Berlin of the highly regarded Rainer Casper.
A career-long partner of the director Frank Castorf, he started out at the Volksbühne in Berlin and was responsible for lighting The Ring of the Nibelung at the 2013 Bayreuth Festival. From 2021 to his death, he headed the lighting department of the Berliner Ensemble.
Abroad, he worked in Oslo, Turin, Vienna and Moscow. His last production was the theatre debut of the visual artist Leila Hekmat ‘Gloriette’, which premiered on December 6, 2024, the day before he died.
Awful shame, he was a very nice man. Condolences to his nearest.
Lighting Designers are often unsung heros in opera. My mind goes back to the earlier days of Sadlers Wells and Scottish Opera when Charles Bristow was quite literally a master painter with the facilities at his disposal. At a time when continental opera houses were largely using a basic wash of light aided by follow spots for the singers, Bristow and other British designers like Richard Pilbrow were far more adventurous with follow spots rarely used other than in, for example, Wagner operas.