In France he is best known for his work for the theatre, internationally for his films La Reine Margot and Intimacy , and for his staging of the Jahrhundertring , the centenary Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in He was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in He attended school in Paris.
Early on he was taken to the Louvre and became interested in the arts, cinema, theatre and music. At age 12, he designed stage sets for plays. At 15, he was enthusiastically celebrated as a theatre prodigy. In , at the age of 19, he began directing for the professional theatre. For me it is a spur to action. It was an almost operatic version of the misunderstood British film. Koch mentioned in his obituary that the unity of direction, scene and light was new for Bayreuth and suggested a critical view on capitalism heading towards fascism.
The Ring production, filmed for television in , [ 12 ] initially provoked controversy, [ 13 ] but was celebrated after its final performance in with a minute standing ovation. I have never put on little things. I am interested only in spectacles that rise above themselves". He first considered Goethe's Faust but then directed in Henrik Ibsen 's Peer Gynt for Villeurbane and Paris, aiming at "an incandescence of theatrical experience, a global spectacle".
Koch observes frequent topics of hunt, and love colder than death Verfolger und Verfolgte, und Liebe He directed Dans la solitude des champs de coton again in , shown at Ivry , the Wiener Festwochen and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Set in the 16th century, depicting the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in France, it shows battles and the St Bartholomew's day massacre. A scene of the queen with the head of her lover is reminiscent of the opera Salome , uniting cult and obsession "Einheit von Kult und Obsession" , as Koch remarks.
I even had an offer from the UK to do a film about Guy Fawkes. It was filmed in A review notes the "presentation of even the smallest roles as deeply-considered characters".
