Stephen Taylor

Stage director

Stephen Taylor, a native of Birmingham, studied English at Trinity College, Cambridge. From 1991 to 1995 he was an assistant director at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, where he participated in productions of the directors Nicholas Hytner, Matthias Langhoff, Benno Besson and others. Since 1992 he has collaborated regularly in Geneva, Strasbourg, Lyon and Paris with Pierre Strosser. Among the projects he has worked on with Strosser has been the production of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, and its revival as the first Australian production of the cycle in Adelaide. At the Paris Opera he was the assistant of Jérôme Savary for the new production of Rigoletto, and he collaborated there with Pierre Strosser on Wozzeck and with Dominique Pitoiset on Don Giovanni. At the Comédie Francaise he assisted Catherine Hiégel with a production of Pinter’s play LThe Homecoming. Between 1997 and 2004 he revived numerous opera productions for the Copenhagen Royal Opera, the Paris Opera (Palais Garnier and the Opéra-Bastille), the Teatro Malibran in Venice, the Glyndebourne Festival, the London Proms, the Grand Théâtre in Geneva, and Opéra National du Rhin.

Since 1998 he has been collaborating regularly with young singers at the Centre de Formation Lyrique of the Paris Opera, where he has directed semi-staged productions of the operas La traviata, Faust, Werther, The Pearl Fishers and Romeo et Juliette. In November 1999 he directed a production of Idomeneo at the Opéra National de Lyon (conducted by Louis Langrée). His production of Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with the ensemble Jeunes Voix du Rhin at the Opéra National du Rhin was performed in 2001 in Colmar, Mulhouse and Strasbourg and again in 2007 at the Théâtre de l’Athénée in Paris and at the Centre Dramatique National d’Hérouville (Comédie de Caen). For the Festival des Nuits Romantiques du Lac du Bourget in 2003, he directed a new production of Don Pasquale performed on the stage of the Théâtre du Casino in Aix-les-Bains under the baton of Laurent Campellone.

In 2005, with Dominique Pitoiset he co-directed Haydn’s opera L’Isola disabitata for the Atelier Lyrique de l’Opéra de Paris, the Théâtre de Suresnes and opera houses in Caen and Rennes. In St. Petersburg, at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, in Seoul and in Tokyo he directed revivals of the production of Ring of the Nibelung originally created for the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. In 2006 for the Paris Opéra Comique and the Théâtre de Suresnes, he directed Franz Lehár’s operetta Springtime. In 2007, at the Palais Garnier in Paris his semi-staged production of the love scenes from Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (with the orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris conducted by Edward Gardner) was performed. In 2008, together with Dominique Pitoiset he took part in the direction of a new production of Purcell’s opera Dido and Æneas at the Théâtre de Suresnes and at the Amphithéâtre de l’Opéra Bastille in Paris. In 2009 he plans to direct a new production of Il Trovatore at the Grand Théâtre in Geneva.