After receiving her vocal diploma from the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Weimar and three years as a soloist at the Landestheater Eisenach, Sonja Trebes studied music theater directing at the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music in Berlin, where master classes with Jossi Wieler, among others, supplemented her training.
As an assistant, she also worked for several years at the Bayreuth Festival as well as the Salzburg Easter Festival and the Beijing Music Festival before becoming an independent director.
Her productions have taken her to Kassel, Gelsenkirchen, Osnabrück, Stuttgart and Luxembourg, among other places, where, in addition to Verdi's »Rigoletto« and »Nabucco«, she set comedic accents with operas such as »Il Capello di paglia di Firenze« (»The Florentine Hat«) by Nino Rota and »Neues vom Tage« by Paul Hindemith.
Sonja Trebes taught acting and scenic design at the University of Bamberg and the Music Academy in Kassel. In 2000 she founded the acting association »Das Kaleidoskop« and received the cultural promotion award of the district of Kronach in this context.
From October 2023, the revival of her production of Hans Gál's »Holy Duck« will be seen at the Musiktheater Heidelberg