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Patrice Chéreau (born 2 November 1944) is a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor,...

Patrice Chéreau (born 2 November 1944) is a French opera and theatre director, filmmaker, actor, and producer. Patrice Chéreau was born in Lézigné, Maine-et-Loire, and went to school in Paris. At a young age he became well-known to Parisian critics as director, actor, and stage manager of his high-school theatre. At 15, he was enthusiastically celebrated as a theatre prodigy. In 1964, at the age of 19, he began directing for the professional theatre. In 1966 he created a very busy Public-Theatre at the Parisian suburb of Sartrouville. In 1969, he staged his first opera. The following year he established a close relationship with the leadership of the Piccolo-Teatro in Milan, Paolo Grassi and Giorgio Strehler. In 1975 he worked in Germany for the first time directing Edward Bond's Lear. He often collaborated with Claude Stratz. Chereau's most discussed production was his 1976 centennial staging of Richard Wagner's tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Bayreuth Festival, conducted by Pierre Boulez. Polarizing fans and critics, Chereau chose to set the operas during the 19th-century Industrial Revolution, and was thought to have emphasized the dramatic rather than the musical