Welcome and thank you for visiting
Welcome and thank you for visiting
Former staff director at Welsh National Opera (2001-2012) working internationally as a stage director, associate and revival director of opera productions. Fellow of the HEA and Lecturer in Vocal Performance at University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Associate Researcher and member of CIRO (Cardiff Interdisciplinary Research in Opera and Drama) at Cardiff University. PhD thesis on ‘Performing Realism’: A practice-led study of contemporary realism in opera staging. Research interests in contemporary performance, translation studies, dialogue, a/r/tography, liminality, intermediality and intersectionality.
Directed critically acclaimed revivals of opera productions for Welsh National Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Scottish Opera, Netherlands Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Chicago Lyric Opera, Bayerisches Staatsoper, Opéra Comique, Le Capitôle Toulouse, Teater an der Wien and Palau de Les Arts Valencia.
Specialist in semi-staging opera in concert venues, such as Sir George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written On Skin with Mahler Chamber Orchestra for two European tours and Holland Festival; with Shanghai Symphony Orchestra for the Beijing Music Festival; and with the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra for the George Benjamin Festival.
Recent practice-as-research directing projects include Written on Skin in Helsinki for FRSO, available to watch for free on the link opposite, with a book chapter in the forthcoming Routledge Companion to Music, Autoethnography and Reflexivity about my involvement with this opera since its world premiere in Aix-en-Provence; the world premiere of the migration-themed operatic monodrama Bhekizizwe by Robert Fokkens, as a film and as a live touring production for Opera’r Ddraig; the UK premiere of As One by Laura Kaminsky, a chamber opera about a transgender protagonist, for Lontano Festival of American Music in London, with a forthcoming a/r/tographic account of the creation of this production for a publication on multimodal translation in the arts.
Name:
Benjamin Davis
MA PhD FHEA
Occupation:
Opera and Theatre Director Researcher
Lecturer
This website is a record of of my work in opera
recent directing projects and research outputs:
Written on skin
FRSO Helsinki (2023)
https://areena.yle.fi/1-63606602
Bhekizizwe
Film world premiere (2021)
live tour of wales (2022)
https://bhekizizweopera.com/en/home/3039
as one
Uk premiere (2021)
https://www.lontano.co.uk/event3-5-6
biography