Opera Scotland

David Pountney Suggest updates

Born Oxford, 10 September 1947.

English director, translator and administrator.

David Pountney has been one of the most consistently successful and influential opera directors of recent years. He has received many international honours for his work, and in 2019 was knighted for services to opera.

Early career

His early career was based with Scottish Opera, first as an assistant director, then staging his own productions. After a period as Director of Productions from 1975 to 1980, he moved on to a similar role at English National Opera (1982 to 1993). Since then he has been based at the Bregenz Festival in Austria and latterly at Welsh National Opera, while continuing to work as a guest with the major houses.

He was educated at Radley College and Cambridge University, where he directed the university Opera Society in a production of The Seven Deadly Sins conducted by his future ENO colleague Mark Elder.

Scottish Opera

Pountney joined Scottish Opera as a staff producer in 1970, assisting Anthony Besch on a new production of The Turn of the Screw. followed by the famous Rosenkavalier with Janet Baker, Helga Dernesch and Elizabeth Harwood in 1971.

He then spent several seasons as an assistant, reviving and revising existing stagings including Don Giovanni, Pelléas et Mélisande, Boris Godunov and Tristan. His first new production was The Rake's Progress in 1971, an uncompromisingly modern view which banished most rococo associations.

In subsequent seasons he directed a variety of successful new productions, Fledermaus, Magic Flute, Seraglio, Meistersinger, Bartered Bride, Golden Cockerel, Macbeth, Don Giovanni and Eugene Onegin. As well as the established designer Ralph Koltai, he worked frequently with two young designers based at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre - Sue Blane and Maria Bjørnson.

Pountney's first production away from the company was at the 1972 Wexford Festival, when he directed a successful Kátya Kabanová. This was revived the following summer at the York Festival. It provided a foretaste of the impressive cycle of five Janáček operas he later staged as a collaboration between the Scottish and Welsh companies. He returned to Wexford for The Gambler and The Two Widows - the latter staging being revived by Scottish Opera in 1979.

His American debut, with Macbeth, came in 1973 at Houston, and he directed Die Meistersinger at the Sydney Opera House in 1978.

England, and English National Opera

His first work at Covent Garden came in 1977, when he rehearsed a revival of Jenůfa. His debut at ENO came the same year, directing the first production of David Blake's Toussaint, an interesting if diffuse piece which benefitted from his work using Maria Bjørnson's spectacular designs.

Running an opera company is notoriously challenging. However, given subsequent difficulties in recent years, the Mark Elder/David Pountney collaboration at ENO seems in retropect to have been a golden time for the company. Productions during his eleven-year tenure at ENO included The Flying Dutchman, The Valkyrie, Macbeth, Rusalka, Hansel and Gretel, Christmas Eve, The Gambler, The Two Widows, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Wozzeck.

Pountney has returned to Scottish Opera twice, in 1989 for Weill's Street Scene, which was a co-production with ENO, then in 1998 his third Smetana production for the company, Dalibor.

His Opera North production of Genoveva was brought to the Edinburgh Festival. He continued his exploration of Czech themes with Julietta at Opera North and The Greek Passion at Covent Garden. He returned to WNO as both librettist and director for The Doctor of Myddfai by Peter Maxwell Davies. His staging of Fidelio on the lake at the Bregenz Festival in 1995 led to a further development of his international career.

Welsh National Opera

Since 2011 Pountney has been chief executive and artistic director at WNO.