Keith Warner was Associate Director at ENO and Scottish Opera, Artistic Director of Opera Omaha, and Head of the Royal Danish Opera. He has directed more than one hundred and fifty operas, plays and musicals for over 60 companies, in 18 countries. He has written librettos to four operas with the composer David Blake. He directed two Ring cycles for The New National Theatre, Tokyo and at The Royal Opera House, London, Lohengrin at the Bayreuth Festival, Rossi’s Orpheus at the Sam Wanamaker/Globe Playhouse and Otello, both for The Royal Opera House. His production of Wozzeck (ROH) also won an Olivier Award.
He has directed the world premieres of a new version of Penderecki’s The Devils of Loudun (Copenhagen), Avner Dorman’s Wahnfried (Karlsruhe), Hans Gefor’s Notorious (Göteborg Opera), and Christian Jost’s “Egmont” (Vienna), as well as the UK premieres of André Tchaikowsky’s The Merchant of Venice and Richard Ayres’s Peter Pan (WNO).
Other work includes:
- André Chénier on the lake stage in Bregenz
- Ten productions at the Theater an der Wien
- A dozen productions at Oper Frankfurt
- A trio of Faust operas by Berlioz, Gounod and Busoni at the Semperoper Dresden
- Elektra (Prague, San Francisco and Karlsruhe)
- Vanessa (Glyndebourne)
- Sondheim’s Passion (Montepulciano) was named by The New York Times as one of the 4 best productions in Europe 2019
Plans include Meistersinger (Prague), Boris Goudonov (Frankfurt), Tannhäuser (Tokyo), and Handel’s “Julius Caesar” (Vienna). He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Bristol.
