Calixto Bieito (born 1963) is a Spanish theater director known for his shocking, bizarre, and often deeply perverted productions of classic operas. His name has become a byword among opera fans for the worst of Eurotrash productions.

Bieito gained perhaps his greatest notoriety with his production of Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera for the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona in 2001. The production was in modern-dress, which is in itself not so shocking. However, Bieito added a number of details to the piece that seemed to serve primarily to get a rise out of the audience. He set the first scene of the opera on a split-level set; on the top half, the primary action of the scene (involving the king and his loyal subjects) played out. The conspirators were ranged along the bottom half of the stage, sitting on toilets with their pants around their ankles. Bieito also took some interesting liberties with the character of Oscar. In the opening scene, the old judge appears in a wheelchair; Oscar promptly sits on his lap and begins making suggestive movements. And in the great quintet that closes Act III, scene I, Renato and his co-conspirators attempt to drown Oscar in the bathtub, for no apparent reason. (It is never revealed why, exactly, the conspirators find it necessary to conspire against the king in the bathroom in the first place.)

This production caused a scandal, not only in Barcelona but in London, when it was performed by ENO. Yet Bieito has continued, undaunted. When designing Die Fledermaus for Welsh National Opera, he stated that he felt the piece to be about prostitution; champagne, a recurring theme in the operetta, was the hard drug of choice for the characters, and ought to be treated as such. More recently, Bieito's production of Mozart's The Abduction from the Seraglio, designed for the Komische Oper in Berlin, has raised eyebrows among many opera-goers. Here is an excerpt from the Financial Times review of the opera:

"Bassa Selim is lord of a brothel, rather than a harem, and keeps Konstanza on a leash in a cage. Bieito has decided Mozart's opera is about prostitution and the slave trade, and he has hired real hookers to prove it. The opera opens with Osmin using one. He sings his first aria naked in the shower, giving his genitals a good scrub. Later he urinates in a glass and forces Blonde to drink it. Then, while Konstanza sings "Martern aller Arten", he hacks up a whore with a knife, finally offering the soprano a pair of bloodied, severed nipples. No wonder she shoots herself at the end."

Bieito is generally viewed as the operatic equivalent of a shock jock; his productions are designed as much as to digust as to reinterpret. Still, he continues to be in demand around Europe, and many companies seem to love the work that he does, even if the public does not.