Thorsten Cölle comes from Stuttgart and studied theater studies, general and comparative literature and political science at the Free University in Berlin as well as opera direction at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. The first own projects were initially created in the Berlin off-scene, such as the Mahagonny-Songspiel in the Theaterhaus Mitte, »Schubert Metamorphosen Ancient Voices« in the Reinbeckhallen Berlin-Oberschöneweide and Fürecht...?! at the Academy of Arts in co-production the comic opera. In Chernivtsi (Ukraine) he developed two intercultural theater projects: Super Bags, a collage of scenes with texts by various European authors and a production of Schubert's Winterreise. Thorsten Cölle has been director of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden since the 2005/2006 season. During this time he worked with such important directors as Peter Mussbach, Robert Wilson, Luk Perceval, Dmitri Tscherniakov, Jossi Wieler, David Alden and Krzysztof Warlikowski. Thorsten Cölle has also been Dmitri Tscherniakov's personal assistant since 2010, which has taken him to the festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and the Copenhagen Opera. At the same time, he staged Francis Poulenc's La Voix Humaine at the Halberstadt Theater and Fürecht...?! and The Widow of Ephesus at the Berlin Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz.