The successful writer and playwright, the author of books and TV-shows, songs and librettos has created with such musicals as “Elisabeth”, “Tanz der Vampire” and “Marie Antoinette” not only a new European form of the popular musical theater, the drama musical, but also the most successful musicals of the last decades.
He is also the author of the German versions of internationally successful musicals, such as “Evita”, “Cats”, “The Phantom of the Opera”, “A Chorus Line”, “Little Shop of Horrors”, “Into the Woods”, “Kiss of the Spider Woman”, “Aspects of Love”, “Sunset Boulevard”, Disney’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, Disney's “The Lion King”, “Mamma Mia!”, Elton John’s “Aida” and finally “Wicked”. He translated the Russian musical “Juno and Avos” into German as well.
Michael Kunze was born in Prague, grew up in Munich, studied law, took a degree and at the end of the 60s started to work as a songwriter and record producer. Due to his successes he has become one of the most popular German songwriters and producers. Such stars as Peter Maffay, Nana Mouskouri, Udo Jürgens, Peter Alexander and the Münchener Freiheit are thankful to Kunze for their greatest hits. But he is the author not only of many German, but also of numerous international top-hits. He also translated songs for Silver Convention, Herbie Mann, Julio Iglesias, Gilbert Becaud and Sister Sledge. Together with Sylvester Levay he was the first German to win a Grammy Award for "Fly, Robin, Fly", the Top-hit in the US charts. Numerous awards and almost a hundred Gold and Platinum Records are the evidence of his successful career. According to a ZDF poll Michael Kunze is the most popular authors among top 100 favorite songs of the Germans and thus the most successful German-language songwriter of the 20th century. In 2005, 30 years after Grammy he received ECHO, the highest German award.
Thanks to his musical “Elisabeth” (music: Sylvester Levay) he became the most successful German-language theater writer. About 9 million people have seen this play about the fight of a proud woman for her right for freedom in many languages. His next works “Mozart!”, “Rebecca” and “Marie Antoinette” (music: Sylvester Levay) as well as “Tanz der Vampire” became internationally successful and are now in playbills of many capitals all over the word. Along with numerous books, TV-shows, theatrical productions and political Cabaret texts he is the author of an opera by American composer Gershon Kingsley (“Raoul”, 2008 Germany/Hungary).
