A.A. Bakhrushin Central State Theatre Museum

A world-wide famous stage designer, painter and teacher, born in 1936 in Brdów near Kościelec. He was a graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (1959) and the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome (1962). He debuted at the Juliusz Słowacki Theatre in Cracow (1959). He started working for the Warsaw opera theatre in 1962, on the famous premiere of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. He also designed the sets for the operas The Prodigal Son by Debussy and Judith by Honegger. He was appointed head stage designer of the Teatr Wielki Polish National Opera in 1966. His great international career began at that time, and his co-operation with the world's leading opera theatres which lasts to this day.

His most important foreign projects included Saint-Saëns' Samson and Delilah (Cologne Opera, 1968), Richard Strauss's operas Salome (Covent Garden, 1970) and Electra (Hamburg Opera, 1973; Paris Opera, 1974; Teatro Sao Carlos, 1992), Ionesco's The Killer (Burgtheater, 1971), La Passione (Piccolo Teatro di Milano, 1972), Orff's De temporum fine comoedia (Salzburg Festival, 1973), Ravel's Daphnis et Chloe (Bühnen der Stadt Bonn, 1987), Eben's Jeremiah (Národni Divadlo, 1998), Mozart's Don Giovanni (Théatre Municipal in Luxembourg, 1998).

Besides many excellent productions at the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera and other Polish opera and drama theatres, he has prepared stage designs in many famous theatres around the world, including Amsterdam, Ankara, Athens, Barcelona (Teatro de Liceu), Berlin, Bonn, Buenos Aires (Teatro Colón), Buffalo, Cologne, Detroit, Dortmund, Essen, Geneva, Hamburg, Lisbon (Teatro Nacional de São Carlos), London, Los Angeles, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan (Teatro Piccolo), Moscow, Munich, New York (Metropolitan Opera), Oslo, Paris, Prague, San Francisco, Tel Aviv (The New Israeli Opera), Turin (Teatro Reggio), Vancouver, Vienna (Burgtheater) and Zurich. His theatrical collaborators had included the conductors Carl Böhm, Herbert von Karajan, Zubin Mehta, Nello Santi and Georg Solti; directors August Everding, Giancarlo del Monaco and Jean Claude Riber; choreographers Peter van Dyck, Yuri Grigorovich, Serge Lifar, John Neumeier and many other world-famous artists.

He was the winner of many prestigious awards, including Second Prize at the Art Biennial in Paris (1961), the First-Degree State Prize (1966), Gold Medals at the Stage Design Triennial in Novi Sad (1966) and the Prague Quadrennial (1967), the First-Degree Award of the Minister of Culture and Art (1975). He received the Knight's Cross of the Order of Poland's Restoration in 1998. Another important aspect of his work was painting, for which he has received many awards in Poland and abroad. On 31 July 2005, he retired from the position of principal stage designer of the Teatr Wielki - Polish National Opera. Andrzej Kreutz-Majewski died in Warsaw on February 29, 2011.

Designer Gallery

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