About
Franck Evin (born May 5, 1960 in Nantes) is a French lighting designer.
Franck Evin went to Paris to study piano at the age of 19. His website reports on the early years: "At night he accompanied singers in the Café Theater Le Connetable and began to be interested in lighting. After a disappointing foreplay with Eliane Richepin, he decided to combine music and technology. "In 1983, he received a scholarship from the French Ministry of Culture and, with the help of his assistant, became assistant lighting director at the Opéra National de Lyon. There he worked together with renowned directors such as Ken Russel and Robert Wilson. In 1986 he started working as an independent lighting designer at the Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf - among others for the director Werner Schroeter and the conductor Eberhard Kloke, who at that time conceived unusual music projects in industrial architecture. This was followed by productions in Nantes, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Paris and Lyon, in Bochum, Bonn, Brussels, Vienna and Los Angeles. In 1993 Evin passed the master examination for event technology in the field of lighting.
Berlin
At the beginning of the 1995/96 season, he took up the position of Artistic Director of the Lighting Department at the Komische Oper in Berlin, lighting new productions of Harry Kupfer, Calixto Bieito, Andreas Homoki, Peter Konwitschny, Barrie Kosky, Hans Neuenfels and others. In Berlin, he worked for a wide repertoire ranging from Handel's Alcina and Mozart's abduction from the Seraglio to Richard Strauss and Emmerich Kálmán, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. In Berlin, he also developed a close collaboration with Andreas Homoki, who in 2004 was appointed Chief Editor of the Komische Oper and in 2007 became Intendant. Together with Homoki, the Richard Strauss productions Capriccio and Frau ohne Schatten were produced at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam, Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin in Berlin and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro in Tokyo. In parallel, Evin has worked as a guest at numerous opera houses, including Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Munich, Graz and the Opéra Bastille in Paris, the Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice and the Vlaamse Opera in Ghent and Antwerp.
Opus
In 2006 he received the OPUS, the major German stage price in the category of lighting design. The reasoning of the jury praises in detail the artistic achievement of Evin in the excellent production - Mozart's Così fan tutte: "Deep and mysterious blue contrasts with the sinful red, the Paradise Gardens are deprived of their secrecy by clear daylight. The light sets strong accents in the mood, creates the red thread for the dramaturgy of the confused action. "However, it was referred to his achievements as lighting director of the house:" He has spent all energy on the Komische opera continuously flexible and set up a modern lighting system and train the staff accordingly so that the house can now present itself as one of the most modern. "
Zurich
In 2010 and 2011 he was invited by the Bayreuth Festival, first for Hans Neuenfels' reinterpretation of Lohengrin, conducted by Andris Nelsons and recorded for television, then for a new Tannhäuser, staged by Sebastian Baumgarten and conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock. When Homoki was appointed artistic director of the Zurich Opera from 2012 onwards as successor to Alexander Pereira, Evin also changed hands and took over the artistic direction of the lighting department there. In 2014, he performed for the first time at the Vienna State Opera - with Andreas Homoki's new production of Wagner's Lohengrin, 2015 for the first time at the Theater an der Wien - for Bellini's La straniera, directed by Christof Loy.
Evin is a lecturer in lighting design for the stage design class at the University Mozarteum Salzburg. In 2016 he will make his debut at the Salzburg Festival with a Faust production in the Große Festspielhaus. Staging, stage design and costumes are taken over by Reinhard von der Thannen and conducted by Alejo Pérez.