Schaaf, Johannes (1933– )

German stage director. He produced classical plays at the Stuttgart Schauspielhaus, and from 1967 made a series of television films about leading musicians. He staged Bizet's Les Contes d'Hoffmann/The Tales of Hoffmann at the Vienna Volksoper, Idomeneo (Mozart) at the Staatsoper, and Capriccio (Richard Strauss) at Salzburg (1985). His work at Geneva Opera included Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, Beethoven's Fidelio (1989), and Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten/The Woman without a Shadow (1992). From 1987 he staged Mozart's Da Ponte operas in London, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in productions which stressed the theatrical conflicts between characters.