Michael Kunze

World-renowned lyri­cist and libret­tist Michael Kunze cre­ated hit shows such as Elis­a­beth, Dance of the Vam­pires, Mozart!, Marie Antoinette, and Rebecca, which have reached a com­bined audi­ence of more than 16 mil­lion peo­ple in Europe and abroad. Their world­wide box office gross receipts have passed the one-billion mark. As a lyri­cist, Michael cre­ated more than 200 chart-busting songs, for which he received the cov­eted Grammy and Echo Life­time Awards. In addi­tion, he authored sev­eral best-selling books.


Michael Kunze’s musi­cals are seen as the foun­da­tion of a new genre of con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar musi­cal the­ater – the Drama Musi­cal. It is char­ac­ter­ized by an elab­o­rate dra­matic struc­ture which inte­grates ele­ments of movie design into the clas­sic two act drama form.


Michael thinks of him­self as an Archi­tect of the Musi­cal Drama.

 His extra­or­di­nary adap­tions con­nected him to the suc­cess of many inter­na­tional musi­cal shows in most German-speaking coun­tries, including…

Fol­lies, Evita, Cats, A Cho­rus Line, Phan­tom of the Opera, Com­pany, Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors, Into the Woods, Kiss of the Spi­der Woman, Sun­set Boule­vard, The Hunch­back of Notre Dame, The Lion King, Aida, Mamma Mia!! and Wicked.

Michael Kunze

In addi­tion to his Grammy and Echo Life­time Awards, Michael Kunze was hon­ored with 79 Gold and Plat­inum Records, 3 Golden Europe Awards, 2 Best Musi­cals Awards (Image1996 and Image 1998), Musi­cal Of The Year Award 2000 (Mozart!), 2001 (Elis­a­beth), 2003 (Dance Of The Vam­pires), 2007 (Rebecca). Michael is a mem­ber of GEMA, Deutsche Dra­matiker Union and The Drama­tists Guild, Inc., New York. He and his wife Roswitha live in Ham­burg, Germany.

Please read the full biog­ra­phy here…