Born in Prague, Kunze is the son of actress Dita Roesler and Walter Kunze. He grew up in Southern Germany and attended Klenze Oberrealschule in Munich. He studied law, philosophy and history at the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich.
Kunze started writing music and lyrics during his high school years in the early sixties. The first song Kunze produced with Peter Maffay was called “Du”. It topped the German charts in the summer of 1970 and went gold.
His recordings dominated the 1970s music charts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. When he produced his first international act, he hit both the top of charts in the U.S. with the song, “Fly, Robin, Fly”.
His group, Silver Convention, represented by Sylvester Levay and Michael Kunze himself, influenced disco music and was the first German ever to win the Grammy Award. Based on his success in the U.S. – after “Fly, Robin, Fly” came such hits as “Lady Bump” and “Get up and Boogie” – Michael produced albums with eg. Julio Iglesias, Nana Mouskouri, Herbie Mann, Lulu, Gilbert Bécaud and others.
In 1981, Kunze stopped working as a producer but continued to write lyrics for top artists. Taking a temporary hiatus from show business, he wrote the book (Strasse ins Feuer). He wrote a second book, Der Freiheit eine Gasse on the 1848 democratic revolution in Southern Germany.
In the 1980s, the musical began making its way into the center of Michael Kunze’s activities. First, he adapted Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Evita, which was the beginning of his collaboration and friendship with the legendary Broadway director, Harold Prince. The success of his adaptation opened the doors of the German-speaking market for the modern Anglo-American musical and made him the preferred translator for international hit shows. His German version of Cats ran for seven years in Vienna, making it one of the greatest hits of all times in that city. The numerous other musicals Kunze has translated include The Phantom of the Opera, A Chorus Line, Song and Dance, Into the Woods, Follies, Assassins, Side by Side by Sondheim, Dorian Gray, Little Shop of Horrors, Aspects of Love, Sunset Boulevard, Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Lion King, Mamma Mia! and Elton John’s Aida.
Kunze also started working for television. He conceived and wrote several, 90-minute shows for the major German and Austrian networks (Liebe ist …/ZDF, Sport Gala/ARD, Weil wir leben wollen /ZDF) and developed the ARD Series Showgeschichten.
With the annual Bambi Award Gala, he created the German counterpart to the American Academy Award presentation. He also conceived Der Goldene Löwe, the German counterpart to the American Emmy Awards Show. Over the years, he has also written a number of articles for German magazines and newspapers, exploring his views on the function of entertainment in society and current media issues.
Since the 1990s, Kunze is creating original musicals in his own style. In 1992 opened Elisabeth in Vienna and became a huge hit. Collaborating with Roman Polanski (director) and Jim Steinman, Kunze wrote his first English libretto and lyrics for the musical, Dance of the Vampires. In October 1997, Tanz der Vampire opened, later the show was transferred to Stuttgart. In 2003, it opened in Hamburg, where it ran for another three years before opening in Berlin. The show also reached Broadway, where, despite Kunze’s protests, an unauthorized version ran, for three months.
Kunze’s Mozart! (musical) (music: Sylvester Levay; director: Harry Kupfer), dramatizing the famous composer’s life, premiered in October 1999 in Vienna (Theater an der Wien). In 2006, two new Michael Kunze musicals opened. While Rebecca, based on Daphne du Maurier’s famous novel, became another hit, Marie Antoinette disappointed. The latter show, dramatizing the events of the French Revolution, opened first in Tokyo and then in 2008, in Bremen. Both productions, though praised by critics, were financial failures. His collaboration with Sylvester Levay went on as they made another musical, Lady Bess, depicting the early life of Elisabeth I, Queen of England. The show opened in Japan in 2014. Kunze also wrote a musical adaptation of Italian comedy Don Camillo & Peppone (music: Dario Farina) which opened in 2016 in St. Gallen and is planned to run in Vienna.
His musicals are considered the foundation of a new genre in contemporary musical theater, called the Drama Musical. Its dramatic structure integrates elements of the film structure into the classic two-act drama form.