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Calixto Bieito (Miranda de Ebro, 2 November 1963) is a Spanish theater director known for his...

Calixto Bieito (Miranda de Ebro, 2 November 1963) is a Spanish theater director known for his radical interpretations of classic operas. Bieito gained perhaps his greatest notoriety with his production of Verdi's Un ballo in maschera for the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in 2001. He set the first scene of the opera on a split-level set; on the top half, the primary action of the scene (involving the king and his loyal subjects) played out. The conspirators were ranged along the bottom half of the stage, sitting on toilets with their pants around their ankles. Bieito also offered a controversial take on the character of Oscar. In the opening scene, the old judge appears in a wheelchair; Oscar promptly sits on his lap and begins making suggestive movements. And in the great quintet that closes Act III, scene I, Renato and his co-conspirators attempt to drown Oscar in the bathtub. This production caused a scandal, not only in Barcelona but in London, when it was performed by ENO. Yet Bieito has continued, undaunted. When designing Die Fledermaus for Welsh National Opera, he stated that he felt the piece to be about prostitution; champagne, a recurring theme in the operetta, was