Friedrich Meyer-Oertel was born in Germany. He studied music, business advertising and graphic art in Vienna in the 1950s. Having studied the oboe and composition, he turned to opera. In 1959 he founded the Theater der Jugend opera studio in Vienna. He was employed as an assistant director in Vienna and Stuttgart in the 1960s and went on to direct opera in Mainz, Mannheim and Wuppertal. Among the many opera productions he directed in opera houses all over the world are Der ring des Nibelungen (Wagner), Lear (Reimann), Hamletmaschine (Rihm), Moses und Aaron (Schoenberg), Don Giovanni (Mozart), Il trittico (Puccini), Life with an Idiot (Schnittke), Macbeth (Verdi), Wozzeck, Lulu (Berg) and many others. 

At the Israeli Opera he directed:
Boris Godunov (2013)