Biography
Robert Wilson is an American experimental theater stage director and playwright. Over the course of his wide-ranging career, he has also worked as a choreographer, performer, painter, sculptor, video artist, and sound and lighting designer.
Known For
Complete Filmography
The King is Dead
2025
When Robert Wilson was a child, he told his teacher he wanted to be a king. The film takes this premise as a point of departure to explore the figure ...
Robert Wilson: The Beauty of the Mysterious
2022
as Self
We look back at more than half a century of mysterious artistic creation while trying to crack a unique artistic code. Why are people moved to tears w...
Händel / Mozart: Der Messias
2020
Director
Known as a creator of astonishing images, stage director and visual artist Robert Wilson delivers a magnificent production of Mozart’s adaption of Han...
Turandot
2020
Director, Lighting Design, Stage Director
After twenty years of absence, Puccini’s Turandot was revived on the stage of the Teatro Real in a new production by American stage director Robert Wi...
Le Trouvère
2019
Director
"This is a family tragedy, and in many ways, it is a very contemporary story." This is how Robert Wilson described Il trovatore, or Le Trouvère in its...
A Winter Fable
2017
Sound, Director
A Winter Fable is a story told by the triptych of video portraits of a wolf, a fox, and a lamb with a score that is composed of music by Coco Rosie, a...
Verdi: La Traviata
2016
Director, Stage Director, Lighting Design
Giuseppe Verdi based his famous opera on the novel “The Lady of the Camellias” by Alexandre Dumas. Robert Wilson’s production of Violetta Valéry’s tra...
The Lost Paradise
2015
as Himself
He is the most performed contemporary composer in the world. And yet he rarely ventures out in public, prefers to keep quiet about his music, feels at...
Adam's Passion
2015
Director, Set Designer
Adam’s Passion is the moving first collaboration between two “masters of slow motion who harmonize perfectly with each other” (Frankfurter Allgemeine ...
Einstein on the Beach
2014
Director, Set Designer
This seminal work of avant-garde opera from composer Philip Glass and director Robert Wilson arrives full-circle, coming to France, the site of its 19...
Bob Wilson's Life & Death of Marina Abramovic
2012
as Self
This hourlong semi-documentary records the musical stage collaboration between director Robert Wilson and veteran performance artist Marina Abramovic....
BAM150
2012
as Self
A captivating history of the nation's oldest performing arts center - which largely mirrors the evolution of experimental and progressive performing a...
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
2012
Director, Stage Director
Debussy's masterpiece, for the first time conducted by the Paris Opera's music director Philippe Jordan, in the fairy staging by Robert Wilson. When P...
Do Not Be Anxious — Be Fast And Be Quiet
2010
as Himself
Shakespeare’s Sonnets
2009
Director, Production Design, Writer
US stage director Robert Wilson has teamed up with pop star Rufus Wainwright to bring Shakespeare’s sonnets to the stage in Berlin. Debuting on Easter...
The Art of Time
2009
as Self
Explores some of the most innovative attempts by contemporary artists, filmmakers, architects etc to explore multiple Temporalities and to counter the...
L'Orfeo
2009
Director, Set Designer, Lighting Director
Rinaldo Alessandrini, one of the most eminent baroque and pre-baroque music specialist, conducts Monteverdi's Orfeo, performed by singers who have bee...
Voom Portraits
2007
Director
Iconic artist and theater director Robert Wilson has created a series of video portraits of celebrities, ordinary people and animals called "VOOM Port...
Annie Leibovitz: Life Through a Lens
2007
as Self - Visual Artist
An account of the professional and personal life of renowned American photographer Annie Leibovitz, from her early artistic endeavors to her internati...
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis
2007
as Self
In this entrancing documentary on performance artist, photographer and underground filmmaker Jack Smith, photographs and rare clips of Smith's perform...
Absolute Wilson
2006
Documentary from Katharina Otto pays homage to famed stage designer Robert Wilson, who overcame childhood learning disabilities growing up in Waco, Te...
Gluck: Orphée et Eurydice
2000
Director
Film recording of Robert Wilson’s stage production of the opera by Gluck. John Eliot Gardiner conducts Berlioz’s 1859 revision of Gluck’s opera “Orphé...
Alceste
1999
Director
John Eliot Gardiner conducts Gluck’s 1776 French version of “Alceste” at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter takes the titl...
La mort de Molière
1994
as Molière
A collaboration in which Robert Wilson and Heiner Müller let Molière die, imagine his death in tableaux with text passages recited by Müller himself. ...
La mort de Molière
1994
Director, Writer
A collaboration in which Robert Wilson and Heiner Müller let Molière die, imagine his death in tableaux with text passages recited by Müller himself. ...
The Black Rider
1990
Creator, Director, Production Design
Inspired by the German folktale, Wilhelm, a file clerk, falls in love with a huntsman's daughter. In order to marry, Wilhelm must prove his worth as a...
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
1987
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars is an in-depth documentation of Robert Wilson’s ambitious attempt to stage an epic, twelve-hour, multinational opera ...
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars
1987
Producer
Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars is an in-depth documentation of Robert Wilson’s ambitious attempt to stage an epic, twelve-hour, multinational opera ...
Einstein on the Beach: The Changing Image of Opera
1985
as director (himself)
The creative processes of avant-garde composer Philip Glass and progressive director/designer Robert Wilson are examined in this film. It documents th...
Stations
1982
Director
Stations is an enigmatic, hauntingly vivid work, in which Wilson envisions the daydreams and fantasies of an eleven-year-old boy as a universe both ma...
Deafman Glance
1981
Production Design, Director
A somber, menacing woman washes white dishes and a gleaming carving knife, pours milk into a glass, and then slowly attacks first one young boy and th...
Video 50
1978
Produced in an era before 24-hour programming cycles, Video 50 was initially used as a late night filler on TV stations in Germany, France, Belgium, a...
Video 50
1978
Director, Director of Photography
Produced in an era before 24-hour programming cycles, Video 50 was initially used as a late night filler on TV stations in Germany, France, Belgium, a...