Hans-Åke Sjöqvist

Hans-Åke Sjöqvist

Lighting designer

The Swedish designer Hans-Åke Sjöqvist studied at Yale University in the United States. From 1980 to 1986, he was the resident lighting designer and head of the lighting department at the Royal Opera in Stockholm, where he designed the lighting for more than thirty opera and dance productions. In 1986, he founded his own company, Candela Design, specialising in lighting design and consultancy.

Among the approximately 150 lighting designs Sjöqvist created for productions in theatres across Europe are those for Manon by Sir Kenneth MacMillan, The Sleeping Beauty (Paris) and Manfred by Rudolf Nureyev (Zurich), Die Walküre for the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Measure for Measure and As You Like It for the National Theatre in Oslo, and I vespri siciliani for the Royal Danish Opera.

In addition to his lighting design for The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, Sjöqvist previously created lighting designs for two other Dutch National Ballet productions: Cinderella in 1987 and Rachel Beaujean’s adaptation of Paquita in 2012.