Birgit Kajtna-Wönig was born in Graz and studied Music Theatre Directing at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. From 2018 to 2025 she served as Stage Director at the Hamburg State Opera. Prior to that, she spent eleven seasons with the Vienna State Opera, where she oversaw more than thirty productions.

Her international engagements have taken her to the Salzburg and Bregenz Festivals, the Bard SummerScape Festival in New York, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, La Scala in Milan, the Schwetzinger SWR Festival, the Wuppertal Bühnen, the State Theatres in Mainz and Stuttgart, Graz Opera, as well as the Vienna Burgtheater.

Under her direction, numerous projects have been realized, among them Snow White for the Hamburg State Opera and Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella at the Vienna State Opera, which was also released on DVD. A close artistic partnership connects her with conductor Adam Fischer. Together they developed a new staged version of Haydn’s Orfeo ed Euridice for the Tonhalle Düsseldorf and the Düsseldorf Symphony Orchestra. With the Danish Chamber Orchestra they toured the production to Copenhagen, Theater an der Wien, and the Musikverein Graz. At the 2023 Salzburg Festival, they presented Mozart’s Il re pastore in a semi-staged version at the Mozarteum. In February 2025, they unveiled a newly conceived staging of Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Hamburg State Opera and at the Salzburg Festival 2025.

Beyond the opera repertoire, Birgit Kajtna-Wönig repeatedly explores innovative formats. These include the song project Love Loves to Wander – A Smartphone Poem for the Vienna State Opera and the staged recital Leaves Also Fall in Paradise with music by Schumann and Schönberg at the Hamburg State Opera.

In collaboration with Hamburg-based artist KUOKO and the Hamburger Dehmelhaus Foundation, she produced and directed the music video Ida’s Song, dedicated to Ida Dehmel. The work premiered at the Thalia Theater/Nachtasyl in Hamburg in October 2022 and went on to receive the Female Filmmakers Award at the Berlin Festival 2023, Best Music Video at the Portugal Independent Film Festival 2023, as well as an Honorable Mention at the Vienna International Film Awards 2023.

She also initiated the project At Home with Ida Dehmel with Barbara Nüsse and Günter Schaupp, for which she conceived, produced, and staged the work in cooperation with the Dehmelhaus, as part of the first Jewish Cultural Days in Hamburg.

www.birgitkajtna.com