© Sandra Then
Following her studies in classical piano and church music in Nuremberg and Regensburg, Bettina Ostermeier has been working as a musical director, stage musician, composer, arranger, and sound designer in drama and musical theater across German-speaking stages. Her work focuses on the crossover between jazz, classical, and world music.
From 2009 to 2018, she served as the musical director of drama at the Staatstheater Nürnberg and received several awards for her work, including the Nuremberg Theater Prize (2012, 2014) and the Culture Prize of the Central Franconian Economy (2017). From 2019 to 2022, she worked as a musical director for the Junges Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich.
As a multi-instrumentalist playing piano, accordion, clarinet, saxophone, and electronics, she was recently seen as a stage musician in the new production of Mozart's “Figaros Hochzeit” directed by Barbora Horáková at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, and as the musical director for “Die Dreigroschenoper” at Theater Münster, directed by Sebastian Schug. She is also responsible as the arranger, composer, and bandleader for the world premiere of “Thüringer Spezialitäten” at the Staatstheater Meiningen.
During the 2026/27 season, alongside other projects, Bettina Ostermeier will take on the musical direction of Wolfram Lotz's “Träume in Europa” at Theater Münster, directed by Remsi Al Khalisi, where she will also perform on stage as a live musician. Additionally, she will make her debut at the Oper Bonn and direct DIE DREIGROSCHENOPER musically for the fourth time, this time under the direction of Pınar Karabulut at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.
