Nikolaus Lehnhoff, one of Germany's leading opera directors, has died at the age of 76, the German news agency DPA reported today.
Lehnhoff died on Saturday after a long illness, DPA said, quoting his family.
The Hanover-born theatre director's most recent stagings were Puccini's "Turandot" at the world-famous La Scala in Milan in May and Francis Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmelites" in Hamburg.
He made his directing debut with Richard Strauss's "Die Frau ohne Schatten" in Paris in 1972 and has worked at all of the world's leading opera houses, including Amsterdam, Berlin, London, Munich, New York and Zurich.
A former assistant to Richard Wagner's grandson, Wieland Wagner, at the legendary Bayreuth Festival in Germany, Lehnhoff also worked at the prestigious Salzburg Festival in Austria and at the Glyndebourne opera festival in Britain.
Lehnhoff was known and respected for swish, elegant, but always thought-provoking stagings that avoided some of the provocative excesses of some of his more controversial colleagues.
