Bettine Kirste

Bettina Kirste (b. 1968) comes from Nuremberg, Germany, where she completed secondary school (1987) and underwent vocational training to be a seamstress (1991). From 1991–1996 she worked as a dressmaker at the Nuremberg Municipal Theatres, whereafter she pursued her education by studies at the college of design in Hamburg. She passed her final master exam there receiving first prize for a lady’s two-piece design. Between 1998 and 2000 she was assistant and costume designer at the Palatine Theatre in Kaiserslautern, and since 2000 she has pursued her career as a free-lance costume designer. Her creations commissioned by the theatre company of Annaberg-Buchholz have included costumes for the Irwing Berlin and Stephen Sondheim musicals, Annie Get Your Gun; and Sweeney Todd, respectively; for Pavel Kohout’s play based on the Edmond Rostand classic, Cyrano de Bergérac; and for Amphitryon by Heinrich Kleist; as well as for the operas, Eugene Onegin; Rigoletto; Zar und Zimmermann; Faust; and La finta giardiniera; and for the operettas, Im weissen Rössl, by Ralph Benatzky; and Franz Lehár’s Der Zarewitsch. For the theatre company of Kaiserslautern, she has designed costumes for Jura Soyfer’s drama, Der Weltuntergang; David Harrower’s Knives in Hens; Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos; and Steffen ’s Herr Krampas: auftauchend; as well as the ballet by Adonis Daukayev, Amor Spiele; and Marc Neikrugs musical drama, Through Roses. She also has to her credit costume designs for the Prague Chamber Opera’s production of George Frideric Handel’s opera, Serse.