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David Edwards

About this Artist

DAVID EDWARDS is a freelance director, writer, and presenter. He was born in London and graduated in Classics from Cambridge University. David has directed opera around the world: in San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland, Houston, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, London (where he staged ten revivals for The Royal Opera), Milan, Vienna, Singapore, and regularly in Tokyo at the New National Theatre, where he taught on the Young Artists’ program for over a decade.

Recent projects have included Il Prigioniero (Dallapiccola), Die Walküre (Act 3), Pélleas et Mélisande, Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, and Boris Godunov (scenes) with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall, London; Fidelio, Rigoletto, and The Merry Widow in Singapore; Tosca, La Traviata, and Les contes d’Hoffmann for Diva Opera touring the U.K. and Europe; Curlew River in Japan; Die Zauberflöte and Roussel’s Padmavati in Bordeaux; Dialogues des Carmélites and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Portland; La Rondine with Oberlin in Italy; Das Rheingold and Die Walküre for Secret Opera; and Edward Lambert’s The Catfish Conundrum and Opera With A Title for the Tête-a-Tête Festival of new opera in London.

David was Artistic Director of Inside the Ring, a series of special events that ran concurrently with Longborough Festival Opera’s Ring cycle in summer 2013, and at Aldeburgh in 2014 he curated a weekend of events entitled Après le Déluge on the theme of early 20th-century music and art.

His original scripts have been performed in London, Aldeburgh, Eastbourne, and Presteigne (Wagner & Berlioz, Verdi in Venice, Wagner, Britten & the Sea, From Bayreuth to Busseto, Verdi's Singers on Record, Verdi’s Trills, Wagner in Exile, Nolan and the Stage, Wagner’s Elements, Breaking The Ring, An Operatic Bestiary, Wagner and the Dream King, Bayreuth or Bust, Gluck at 300, Time Becomes Space – Act 3 of Parsifal). David is Production Director for The Mastersingers (www.mastersingers.org.uk), a charitable organization dedicated to supporting and mentoring the development of young singers into the German Romantic and Wagnerian repertoire.