Barbara de Limburg designs for both theatre and opera, creating sets with great style, imagination and visual beauty. Born in Brussels, she studied set design at La Cambre, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Visuels in Brussels. Initially she worked mainly in theatre and in dance, enjoying a successful partnership with choreographer Bud Blumenthal, before expanding into opera.

Barbara De Limburg enjoys a collaboration with director Laurent Pelly; productions together include Offenbach’s i for L’Opéra Comique in Paris/Greek National Opera/Volksoper Wien, Verdi’s Falstaff for Teatro Real Madrid/La Monnaie de Munt/Nikikai Opera Foundation, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Le Coq d’Or for La Monnaie de Munt/Teatro Real Madrid/Opéra national de Lorraine – winner of the Prix de l’Europe Francophone awarded by L’Association Professionnelle de la Critique – and Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénedict and Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges for Glyndebourne Festival.

Other recent projects include set design for a new work based on Alice in Wonderland with director/authors wearelusi.com, premiered in a spiegeltent in Milan in December 2021, and current titles include a new production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company with director James Bonas for Génération Opéra.

Her work is often seen in revival, notably Massenet’s Cendrillon at Chicago Lyric Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Royal Opera London, La Monnaie de Munt, Opéra de Lille, Gran Teatre del Liceu, National Theatre Taichung and Opera Australia; Ravel’s L'enfant et les sortilèges at Glyndebourne Festival, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and Teatro alla Scala Milan; Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (Laurent Pelly) at Glyndebourne Festival, Opéra de Lyon, Teatro Real Madrid and Seattle Opera.

Her debut opera design was Massenet’s Cendrillon for the Santa Fe Opera in 2006. This was followed by Mozart’s La finta semplice (Theater an der Wien), Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel (Glyndebourne, Festival), Janáček’s The Cunning Little Vixen (Saito Kainen Festival Matsumoto, Maggio Musicale Florence), Massenet’s Don Quichotte (la Monnaie de Munt, Teatro Massimo, Palermo) and Weill’s The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Thèâtre du Capitole, Toulouse).

Work with director Laura Scozzi includes Berlioz’s Benvenuto Cellini and Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims for Nuremberg State Opera. Other productions include Mozart’s Idomeneno with Christophe Gayral for Opéra national du Rhin and La traviata and Hänsel und Gretel for Angers Nantes Opéra with Emmanuel Bastet.

Theatre productions include set design for Erik Satie – Mémoires d’un amnésique, Tennessee Williams – Short Stories and Vers Santeuil, a work based on Marcel Proust’s Jean Santeuil, in Toulouse (director Agathe Mélinand) and Sous la ceinture for Théâtre Varia, Brussels and Théâtre national de Bordeaux (director Delphine Salkin).