Adele Änggård


Adele Änggård is a British-Swedish stage and costume designer whose career has spanned some of the most significant major stages across Europe and Scandinavia. In parallel she's actively pursued archeology and writing, and in later life contributed new interpretations on early European civilizations.

Background and education

Adele Hankey was daughter of Robert Hankey, 2nd Baron Hankey. From 1948 to 1953 she studied ballet at the Elmhurst Ballet School with a focus on art and design, as well as theatre at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. From 1960 to 1963 she took a series of design courses under Paul Colin, and studied art at the Académie Julian and with André Lhote at his studio. In 1972 she studied television and film at the College of San Mateo.

Career

Adele Änggård has had a long and prolific career in theatre, contributing to some 80 productions between 1957 and 2000. Her designs were often noted for an essential simplicity, which integrated the visual part of a performance with the drama and acting as a whole.

Prominent opera productions

In parallel to her theatre career she developed a lifetime interest in ancient Greece and archaeology, starting in childhood with archaeologist Vronwy Hankey, a Minoan and Mycenae specialist and included visits to the caves of Altamira and Lascaux. Later, as an extension of her theatrical career – so as to better understand Greek play scripts – she studied archaeology at Södertörn University, receiving a bachelor's degree.
Following extensive research, she published A Humanitarian Past in 2016. The book adds a sophisticated social dimension to early European history, and challenges modern conceptualizations of the earliest European ancestors as being underdeveloped and prehistoric art as primitive.