Florence von Gerkan, born in Hamburg, studied costume design with Martin Rupprecht at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin. She made her debut in 1988 at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg collaborating with Jürgen Flimm (direction) and Erich Wonder (sets) on Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya and Ibsen’s The Wild Duck. She made her music theatre debut with Wilfried Minks in Düsseldorf (Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss). It was followed by many opera productions with Jürgen Flimm in Zürich and Vienna, including Handel’s Alcina, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosď fan tutte, Haydn’s L’Anima del Filosofo, Schubert’s Alfonso und Estrella, Verdi’s La Traviata, Offenbach’s La Périchole and Alban Berg’s Wozzeck at Milan’s La Scala.
She also worked on the world premiere of Herbert Willi’s Schlafes Bruder in Zürich (with Cesare Lievi) and on Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix and Verdi’s Il Trovatore (with Daniel Schmid). Her projects also included Szymanowski’s King Roger at the Staatstheater in Stuttgart and Beethoven’s Fidelio at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In 2000 she began work on Wagner’s Ring cycle in Bayreuth and designed costumes for the first performance of Heiner Goebbels’s Hashirigaki at the ThéČtre Vidy in Lausanne. Two years later she worked on Goebbels’s Landscape with Distant Relatives at the Grand ThéČtre de GenŹve with the participation of Ensemble Modern. She also resumed collaboration with Jürgen Flimm and Erich Wonder in the world premiere of Die Riesen vom Steinfeld by Friedrich Cerha and Peter Turini at Vienna’s Staatsoper, with Thomas Hampson in the title role. In 2004 she worked again with Heiner Goebbels – on his Eraritjaritjaka at the ThéČtre Vidy in Lausanne.
Since 2003 Florence von Gerkan has been on the faculty of the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin (sets and costume design).