HAITHAM ASSEM TANTAWY
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STAGE DIRECTOR
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Haitham Assem Tantawy is an Egyptian-German opera and music-theatre director, performer, and movement director. His recent production of The Lighthouse (Der Leuchtturm) by Peter Maxwell Davies at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein received widespread critical acclaim and was praised as a “breathtaking Gesamtkunstwerk”. For his staging, Tantawy was nominated as Director of the Year in the prestigious critics’ poll of the Opernwelt yearbook (2024/25 Season)
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Tantawy approaches opera and music-theatre as a ritual of transformation - a holistic encounter of sound, body, image, and soul. His work is distinguished by a powerful visual language and an intense physical approach to musical storytelling, drawing on transcultural mysticism, mythology, and philosophy. He creates emotionally charged performances that fuse deep character work with striking stage imagery, crafting an aesthetic experience that resonates deeply with diverse audiences.​​​​​​​
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​​​​​Tantawy began his artistic journey at an early age, studying piano and music theory through the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music. In 2013, he earned a Master of Arts in Performance Practices and Research from the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. In 2022 he then earned a second Master of Arts in opera stage directing from the Karlsruhe University of Music. Tantawy also holds a Bachelor of Science (2008) and a Master of Science (2010) degree in Engineering.​​
​Tantawy has enriched his practice through numerous acting and physical theatre workshops in Poland and Italy, including training with Teatr Zar and the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski & Thomas Richards. From 2015 to 2016, he was a member of the internationally renowned, award-winning ensemble Song of the Goat Theatre in Poland, performing as an actor, dancer, and singer in the productions of Crazy God (based on Shakespeare's Hamlet) at Teatr Polski in WrocÅ‚aw, and Portraits of Cherry Orchard (based on Chekhov’s Cherry Orchard) at Teatr Dramatyczny in Warsaw.​​
​Since 2014, Tantawy has been working as an acting coach and guest lecturer at various theatre academies and schools in Germany, Poland, and Egypt. In 2014, he founded the SINAI Orchestral Theatre in Berlin, an independent company through which he created the publicly funded music theatre productions Preludes and Yusuf’s, serving as both director and composer.
In 2019, at the Spieltriebe Festival at Stadttheater Osnabrück, he directed the world premiere of the chamber opera Das Ebenbild & Der alte Traum by Kyungjin Lim and Tingting Pang, for which he also wrote the libretto. The production resonated not only on stage but also in academic discourse, and serves as a central case study in Anna D. Rüdel’s book Staging Interreligious Differences – Theatre as a Challenge for Interreligious Dialogue (2023). In the same year, Tantawy also worked as Movement Director for Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia at the Nederlandse Reisopera.
Between 2019 and 2022, while studying at the Karlsruhe University of Music, he participated in a masterclass with Peter Konwitschny, directing scenes from Puccini’s La Bohème. Later he also directed a reduced version of Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. In 2020, he was awarded scholarships by both the Richard Wagner Scholarship Foundation and the Mozartfest Würzburg. That same year, he conceived and directed Wider das Verlöschen, his own Wagner-inspired opera piece for chamber ensemble and two singers, supported by the Richard Wagner Association in Karlsruhe and the Wagner Society of Santiago de Chile. The production is currently featured on the Richard Wagner 2026 (RIWA 26) online platform, dedicated to celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Bayreuth Festival.
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Since the 2022/23 season, Tantawy has been working at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf/Duisburg as a staff and assistant director, collaborating with renowned stage directors from the international opera scene. Since 2026 he is represented worldwide as stage director by TACT Artists Management.
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