Director Ansgar Weigner was born in 1975 in Stolberg near Aachen. After graduating from high school, he studied musicology, art history and German language and literature at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn. While still a student, he worked as an assistant director at the Saxon State Opera in Dresden, the Saarland State Theatre in Saarbrücken, the Baden State Theatre in Karlsruhe and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein in Düsseldorf-Duisburg. There he worked with directors such as Christof Loy, Marco Arturo Marelli, Dominik Neuner, Helen Malkowsky and Philipp Himmelmann. After graduating, Weigner was initially employed as an assistant director at the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden. During this time, he was particularly influenced by his collaboration with Dietrich W. Hilsdorf. After just three seasons as an assistant director and four productions of his own, Weigner has been working successfully as a freelance director since the 2007/08 season. By the end of the 2023/24 season, he will have directed around 60 productions: In addition to opera, operetta and musicals, there are also works from the fields of cabaret, drama, children’s opera and contemporary music theatre. Among the positive reviews, those of the following productions stand out in particular: Neues vom Tage (Theater Münster), Die Zauberflöte (Theater Gera), Die Liebe zu den drei Orangen (Staatstheater Wiesbaden) and Die schöne Helena (Theater St. Gallen).
Since 2020, Weigner has worked selectively with graduation productions, workshops and regular teaching activities at the universities of music in Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Trossingen and Osnabrück. He also completed a diploma in church organ at the International French Academy of Music with Michel Chapuis and received lessons from Prof. Dr Wolfgang Bretschneider in Bonn.