Prof. Dr. phil. habil. Stephan Mösch completed a double degree: music, theatre and literature studies in Berlin, as well as singing in Berlin and Stuttgart. He attended master classes with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Aribert Reimann and Helmuth Rilling. He was a scholarship holder of the German National Academic Foundation and the Richard Wagner Scholarship Foundation. While still a student, he was awarded the Domgraf-Fassbaender Prize and was a prizewinner at the German Music Competition. In 2001 he completed his doctorate at the TU Berlin with a study on Boris Blacher (Der gebrauchte Text, published in 2002 by Metzler Verlag, press review under List of Publications). His habilitation took place in 2008 at the University of Bayreuth and led to a double Venia Legendi for the subjects of musicology and theatre studies with a special focus on music theatre. The DFG-funded habilitation thesis entitled "Weihe, Werkstatt, Wirklichkeit. Wagner's 'Parsifal' in Bayreuth 1882-1933" was published in 2012 in its 2nd edition by Bärenreiter (press review under list of publications).
As a university teacher in the academic and artistic fields, Stephan Mösch was part of the first faculty of the Executive Master in Arts Administration programme at the University of Zurich and one of the mentors of the FWF project "Opera between Hermeneutics and Performativity" at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Graz. In 2010/11 he represented the Chair of Music Theatre Studies at the University of Bayreuth. He has also taught at the universities of Berlin (UdK), Marburg and Vienna as well as at the Weimar Master Classes, the Korean National University of Arts in Seoul and the Conservatory of Music in Shanghai. He has been invited by the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals as well as many major opera houses (including the Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Frankfurt Opera, Semperoper Dresden [Saxon State Opera], Stuttgart State Opera and Vienna State Opera) to give lectures and moderations. He has designed and chaired conferences at home and abroad.
From 1994-2013, Stephan Mösch worked as editor in charge of the professional journal "Opernwelt" (Berlin), whose profile he significantly expanded and shaped. During these years he was also co-editor of the yearbook "OPER" and a CD series. In 2004, "Opernwelt" was awarded the Gottlob Frick Medal in Gold. Stephan Mösch has been writing for the feature section of the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" for 25 years and works for radio stations of the ARD. He has repeatedly been invited as an expert to television programmes, including the first live broadcasts from the Bayreuth Festival (Arte, ZDF/3sat, BR).
Stephan Mösch has been a member of the German Academy of Performing Arts since 2022. From 2019 to 2022 he was an advisory board member at the German Historical Museum (Berlin). From 2011 to 2021 he was a member of the board of trustees of the Internationale Hugo Wolf Akademie e.V. From 2012 to 2018 he served on the board of trustees of the Richard Wagner Foundation for the redesign of the Richard Wagner Museum in Bayreuth. He has been or is a jury member of numerous national and international competitions for singing, directing and stage design such as the Bundeswettbewerb Gesang, the Concours Suisse Ernst Haefliger, the Competizione dell'Opera, the "Debut" Competition, the Ring Award, the International Competition for Lied Art of the Hugo Wolf Academy and the Hans Gabor Belvedere Competition. He is also a member of the German Record Critics' Prize.