Ralph Koltai
Abstract set designer who created a war crimes library in Nuremberg
THE HIGHLY regarded stage and opera designer, Ralph Koltai, who has died aged 94, was noted for his work with the National Theatre and on Broadway. Born in Berlin to a Hungarian Jewish father, Alfred Koltai, and a German Jewish mother, Charlotte née Weinstein, he was educated at a Jewish school in the city. Worried by the rise of the Nazis, his father sent him to England via Brussels where he joined the Kindertransport in 1939. On arrival, he was taken in by Quakers who sent him to a farm in Perthshire where he found himself among former inmates of Borstal. He escaped to London and joined the Royal Army Service Corps in 1944.
Because of his knowledge of German, he was posted to Essen and later to Nuremberg to create a library at the time of the war crimes trials. He attended the hearings and commented on some of the Nazi leaders facing trial. Streicher, “the Jew-baiter” was, he said, a moron, while Goering “wiped the floor with some of the prosecutors”.
Koltai’s parents also escaped the Holocaust, his father emigrating to Cuba and his mother joining her son in England, where she took a job as a nurse in Epsom in Surrey. Still in the Service Corps on his return to London, Koltai became a sergeant in an intelligence unit tracking down other war criminals.
Having already begun training as a commercial artist at the Epsom School of Art in 1943, he continued his studies at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1948 till 1951 and already, before graduating, started designing for opera at the London Opera Club, his debut being designs for the comic opera Angelique by Jacques Ibert. Later, from 1965 till 1972, he headed the department of theatre design at the Central School.
Working on opera and ballet designs for ten years, Koltai was spotted by Bill Gaskill, director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who had been impressed by his sets for the production of Carmen at Sadlers Wells. His first major job for the RSC were the sets for The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht and he continued to work with the RSC while also creating sets for opera, musicals and ballet.
Koltai also worked with the National Theatre, and his designs for the all-male production of As You Like It in 1967 gained him much attention. He replaced furniture with geometric forms and the trees of the Forest of Arden were plexiglass tubes. His designs for the National’s 1969 production of Shaw’s Back to Methuselah were cosmological images reflecting the history of the race. In the same vein were his sets for Wagner’s Ring cycle at the English National Opera.
While he was at times somewhat critical of ‘the cult of the director’, believing that Britain’s lack of interest in visual arts led to all honours being credited to one individual, there were times when he worked closely with a particularly notable director like Trevor Hands at the RSC, collaborating with him on threeplays:
Much Ado About Nothing, Cyrano de Bergerac and Othello.
Nevertheless, he commented that “the designer is a very lonely animal” needing to “remain true to himself as a creative artist”, even though a production was a “collaborative effort”. In his case it appeared that directors tended to leave him on his own on any given project and that he worked from a glimmer of input and inspiration. He admitted, in an interview in 1984, that this suited him and that he didn’t respond well to being told what was wanted.
Koltai also created designs for productions on Broadway. In 1984for example, the National’s Cyrano and Much Ado rossed the Atlantic. He also designed sets for the Broadway play Pack of Lies in 1985.
Koltai often found inspiration in filmic techniques but avoided working in films and television, explaining: “You might spend weeks making something and it will never appear because they point the camera in another direction. In the theatre you still have a say in what happens.”
A retrospective of Koltai’s work, including Explorations, a series of 3D sculptural metal collages, (inspired by his designs for Macbeth in Copenhagen in 1998) was put on at the National Theatre in 2004.
At the age of 91 he returned to opera, designing a group of three for the Welsh National Opera. He was appointed CBE in 1983.
He married Annena Stubbs, a costume designer, in 1954. They divorced in 1976 but continued collaborating on designs. In 2008 he married Jane Alexander, who survives him.
EMMA KLEIN