Whether directing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York or the Scala in Milan, 62 year-old Luc Bondy of Switzerland is perhaps the most important theater director in Europe. Bondy, who made a name for himself as an author, directs the theater 'Schaubühne' in Berlin as well as managing the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna theater festival). As a director, he is able to inspire his actors with a soft voice and parsimonious gestures towards peak performance. As a man, who knew all along to enjoy the artistic gleam of life, he overcame mortal illness.

Irene Höfer and Hanns-Bruno Kammertöns meet up with him in Nanterre near Paris, where Bondy is directing Eugène Ionesco’s 'The Chairs'. They talk to him in his apartment next to the
Luxembourg Gardens in Paris and join him at auditions and early rehearsals for “Rigoletto” in Vienna. With gracious openness, Bondy recounts the great stages of his life and about his friendships with Michel Piccoli and Peter Handke. In an interview Vienna Burg theater actresses, Birgit Minichmayr and Dörthe Lyssewski, confess to the special ways in which Bondy the director touches the souls of his actors.

When asked how he would characterize his friend Luc Bondy, Peter Handke answers, 'All the windows wide open and there’s a violin or a guitar, and the draft causes the instruments to tremble, even emit a sound – that could be something from Luc Bondy.'