After celebrating our Artistic Director David Pountney’s 70th birthday, and the opening night of From The House of the Dead, it seems apt that his relationship with WNO began with a Janáček cycle of operas co-produced with Scottish Opera, where David was Director of Productions at the time. Beginning with a production of Jenůfa in 1975, it marked the start of over 40 years of collaboration and later, bold programming, here at WNO.
Other productions that made up this cycle over the following seven years, all directed by David were: The Makropoulos Case, The Cunning Little Vixen, Katya Kabanova, and From the House of the Dead. Vixen is still regularly performed and From the House of the Dead was revived in our Autumn 2017 Season for the first time since 1997. With a new version of the score edited by John Tyrrell with performance suggestions by Sir Charles Mackerras, this made it almost a premiere.
In 1996, WNO’s 50th year, we commissioned a new opera, The Doctor of Myddfai, by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, for which David wrote the libretto. The opera included Welsh language songs and was based on a 12th century Welsh folk tale. A couple of years later in 1998, Boris Godunov marked two anniversaries: 30 years since the establishment of the professional Chorus and 25 years of a fully-contracted, full-time Orchestra.
In 2013 Lulu would become the first production David directed for WNO as our Artistic Director. Some of the other productions he has directed for us as Artistic Director include William Tell, Figaro Gets a Divorce, In Parenthesis and Khovanshchina – which was also revived in Autumn 2017.
Throughout his association with WNO, David’s other relationships have often come into play and influences the work the company produces. Many of his productions are produced with repeated creative teams – from composers such as Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Elena Langer, to designers like Johan Engels, Ralph Koltai, Raimund Bauer and Marie-Jeanne Lecca and we have co-produced operas with other renowned companies from around the world. As he put it to Bachtrack in 2016:
‘I am immensely lucky and privileged to be able to create projects like the Figaro trilogy and In Parenthesis for WNO and then do a few projects outside. Working in other international companies also helps me to keep WNO in touch with the wider operatic scene – essential for developing partnerships and co-productions.‘
If you follow that thinking by his comments in a news piece for this website back in early 2014, you truly get an idea of how much opera means to David and in his belief in its relevance, when companies like WNO allow it to breathe:
'It’s exciting I think for the enduring value of opera, and an important justification of its continuance as a major European cultural art-form, that it not only gives delight and pleasure, but also stirs our emotions and our imaginations about topics that are still essential debating points and subjects of concern to contemporary society, as they were for the societies and times that created them… WNO urges you not to shut opera up in a box of heritage nostalgia, but acknowledge its power to speak for societies of today, as well as so powerfully evoking the societies of the past. That is a key to its richness and power as an art-form.’