Biography

Michael Kunze was born on Novem­ber 9, 1943, in Prague, the Cap­i­tal City of the Czech Repub­lic. After his par­ents had trans­ferred to Ger­many, he stud­ied law, phi­los­o­phy and his­tory at the Lud­wig Max­i­m­il­ian Uni­ver­sity in Munich.

Dur­ing the early six­ties, Michael dis­cov­ered his pas­sion for song­writ­ing. It didn’t take but a few short years before his art pro­duced “gold”. The 1970’s chart-topper “Du”, with future Ger­man pop super star, Peter Maf­fay, ini­ti­ated a decade-long string of #1 Hits fea­tur­ing the great­est names in the Euro­pean pop music world.

Michael Kunze (ca. 1970)

With his group “Sil­ver Con­ven­tion” and their Bill­board #1 Disco Smash Hit “Fly, Robin, Fly”, Michael Kunze (lyrics, pro­duc­tion) and Sylvester Levay (music) became the first Ger­man out­fit ever to win a cov­eted Grammy Award. After that, Michael cre­ated a vast num­ber of hit-productions with inter­na­tional super stars such as Julio Igle­sias, Her­bie Mann, Lulu, Nana Mousk­ouri, Gilbert Bécaud, Cate­rina Valente, and Sis­ter Sledge. In addi­tion to his Grammy Award, Mr. Kunze was hon­ored with 56 gold and 23 plat­inum records.

In the early 1980’s, Michael took a hia­tus from show biz and fin­ished his book, High­road To The Stake: A Tale Of Witch­craft (Ger­man title: Strasse ins Feuer). A sec­ond book fol­lowed: Give Way To Free­dom (Ger­man: Der Frei­heit eine Gasse). It dealt with the 1848 demo­c­ra­tic rev­o­lu­tion in South­ern Germany.

Kunze’s sub­se­quent focus on Ger­man adap­ta­tions of Eng­lish hit musi­cals was marked by the begin­ning of his friend­ship and col­lab­o­ra­tion with leg­endary Broad­way direc­tor, Harold Prince. After a suc­cess­ful run of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Evita, Michael had one of the great­est Vien­nese musi­cal hits of all times with his Ger­man ver­sion of Cats.

Fur­ther adap­tions include Phan­tom of the Opera, A Cho­rus Line, Song and Dance, Into the Woods, Fol­lies, Assas­sins, Side by Side, Dorian Gray, Lit­tle Shop of Hor­rors, Aspects Of Love, Sun­set Boule­vard, Kiss Of The Spi­der Woman, The Hunch­back Of Notre Dame, The Lion King, Mamma Mia! and Elton John’s Aida.

Mr. Kunze also wrote for the Ger­man and Aus­trian TV net­works. He cre­ated sev­eral 90-minute shows and pop­u­lar cult series for prime time pro­gram­ming slots, i. e. Sir Peter Ustinov’s 70^th Birth­day Bash in Paris, the Bambi Gala (Germany’s equiv­a­lent to the Acad­emy Awards Pre­sen­ta­tion), as well as Der Gold­ene Löwe, a coun­ter­part to the Amer­i­can Emmy Awards Show.

Michael Kunze receives the Echo Award

Cur­rent List of Awards

Grammy Award for Fly, Robin, Fly, music by Sylvester Levay (1975)

Paul-Lincke-Ring (1989)

Golden Feather, Ger­man Lyri­cists Union (1991)

Heinz-Bolten-Baeckers-Preis of the GEMA-Stiftung (1993)

Musi­cal of the Year Award for Mozart! (musi­cal) (2000)

Musi­cal of the Year Award for Elis­a­beth (2001)

ECHO Life­time Award (2005)

Musi­cal of the Year Award for Rebecca (musi­cal) (2007)

Ger­man Music Authors’ Awards (2010)

The 1990’s brought a huge turn­ing point in Michael Kunze’s career — he started to write his own musi­cals. The dra­matic struc­ture of his works, which he bap­tized “Drama Musi­cals”, was soon hailed as the re-birth of the con­tem­po­rary con­ti­nen­tal musi­cal the­ater in Europe.

His first show, ELISABETH, opened in 1992 at Vienna’s fabled The­ater an der Wien. It ran for over 6 years with con­sis­tently sold-out per­for­mances. The musi­cal was then exported to Japan, Hun­gary, Swe­den, Hol­land and Germany.

DANCE OF THE VAMPIRES pre­miered in 1997 at the Vien­nese Raimund The­ater. In 2000, it was moved to Stuttgart, Ger­many, and later to Ham­burg and Berlin. This col­lab­o­ra­tion with Roman Polan­ski (direc­tor) and Jim Stein­man (com­poser) con­tin­ues suc­cess­fully in the biggest the­aters of Poland, Hun­gary, and Japan. Unfor­tu­nately, an unau­tho­rized ver­sion of Michael’s libretto and lyrics was shown for 3 months on Broad­way, where it even­tu­ally flopped.

MOZART! offers a unique per­spec­tive on the famous composer’s life. It pre­miered in Octo­ber 1999 in Vienna (The­ater an der Wien) and con­tin­ues to play in Ham­burg, Ger­many; Karl­stad, Swe­den; Tokyo, Japan; and Budapest, Hungary.

REBECCA, based on Daphne Du Maurier’s famous novel, opened in 2006 in Vienna and became a huge cult hit with a tremen­dous fol­low­ing. In addi­tion to its phe­nom­e­nal suc­cess in Aus­tria, this extra­or­di­nary drama musi­cal wins awards and breaks atten­dance records in Hun­gary, Japan, Rus­sia and Finnland.

MARIE ANTOINETTE (2006) dra­ma­tizes the events of the French Rev­o­lu­tion. It became the absolute critic’s dar­ling in Tokyo, Japan and Bre­men, Germany.

Addi­tional recent works of Mr. Kunze include the opera, RAOUL (music by Ger­shon Kings­ley), and the pop ora­to­rium, THE TEN COMMANDMENTS (music by Dieter Falk).

Michael Kunze gave the keynote speech at the 2009 Sec­ond Euro­pean Con­fer­ence of the Musi­cal The­ater Edu­ca­tors Alliance Inter­na­tional, A Tale of Two Cities, in Ham­burg, Ger­many and Kopen­hagen, Denmark.

As his drama musi­cals’ con­cept inte­grates film struc­ture ele­ments into the clas­sic two-act drama form, it is con­sid­ered the foun­da­tion of a new genre in con­tem­po­rary musi­cal theater.

Michael Kunze lives with his wife, Roswitha, in Ham­burg, Germany.

Any plans for the future, Mr. Kunze?