ARTISTIC Director

SPEAKER

Opera Director

Ella Marchment is internationally acclaimed as one of opera’s finest auteur stage directors and artistic directors.

Whether dramatizing canonical classics or contemporary masterpieces, Ella imaginatively blends music, drama, movement, and design to create enthralling and engaging productions.

Ella’s award-winning operas have been performed in theatres throughout Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, and America, and screened worldwide by national broadcasters and global streaming platforms.

Ella has also directed the International Opera Awards at The London Coliseum, Teatro Real in Madrid, and Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London.

As a director, Ella is represented in the USA and North America by Kathy Olsen of Encompass Arts, New York, and in the rest of the world by Day Macaskill of Cruickshank Cazenove, London.

‘Something great here rises

Awards

Ella’s productions have received two International Opera Awards nominations – Best Rediscovered Work 2024, L’aube rouge, Wexford Festival Opera, and Best Rediscovered Work 2023, Le Roi de Lahore, Dorset Opera – and her staging of Philip Glass’s Hydrogen Jukebox won the National Opera Association’s Opera Production Award for 2022–2023.

In 2018 and 2022 Ella was a semi-finalist in the European Opera Directing Prize, and in 2018 she was shortlisted for the Women of the Future Awards. In 2015 Ella became the first opera director to receive an International Opera Awards bursary. Ella has also served as a funding assessor for PRS for Music in the UK.

Ella has been commissioned by publishers in London to write a book on arts management, and she is a co-founder of the charity SWAP’ra.

Ella has a first-class honours degree in music (with German and Italian) from King’s College London and the Royal Academy of Music, as well as a scholarship for academic excellence conferred by King’s College London. Ella also has postgraduate qualifications in set design and drama, awarded by Central St Martins and by City Lit in London.

Artistic Director

Ella Marchment believes that an opera company should be a welcoming, collaborative, and creative place, where performers and artists are nurtured to excel, and audiences are offered richly layered, thought-provoking productions.

Ella is currently the Artistic Director of Opera in the Rock, Arkansas, and she has previously run opera and theatre companies in Europe and America, including the Opera Festival of Chicago, Helios Collective, Constella OperaBallet, and Theatre N16.

During the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, Ella also founded the internationally celebrated Opera Harmony movement, bringing together more than 100 artists worldwide to compose and film twenty new operas, premiered by OperaVision.

Ella’s opera seasons have included research-driven rescoring and restaging of canonical masterworks; opera club nights and festivals; international competitions for new compositions; an operetta for Channel 4; augmented-reality, virtual-reality, and interactive animated productions; and operas combined with theatre, modern dance, and ballet

‘Wow-factor level of glamour

Professor & Speaker

In addition to directing productions worldwide, Associate Professor Ella Marchment is currently the Director of Opera at Shenandoah University, USA.

Ella has also worked for other pre-eminent universities and conservatoires, including the Royal College of Music, London; the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London; the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London; The Juilliard School, New York; and Northern Illinois University, USA.

Ella regularly speaks at events in Europe and America, covering topics such as the art of stage directing, the role of women in opera, diversity in performance arts, opera management, the future of opera, and arts funding.

Ella has also featured in numerous national and international broadcasts, including programmes and shows hosted by BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4, RTÉ, Opera America, Opera Vision, Dallas Opera, OperaCast, and Resonance FM.

‘A genuinely imaginative fusion of sound and screen that manages to say something worthwhile

The Guardian

Opera Harmony

Barnum’s Bird directed by Ella Marchment for The Royal College of Music July 2023 Photo copyright Chris ChristodoulouBarnum’s Bird directed by Ella Marchment for The Royal College of Music July 2023 Photo copyright Chris Christodoulou

Contact

Ella Marchment is represented in the USA and North America by Kathy Olsen of Encompass Arts, New York, and in the rest of the world by Day Macaskill of Cruickshank Cazenove, London

USA & North America

Kathy Olsen
Encompass Arts, LLC
119 West 72nd Street
New York, NY 10023
United States of America

+1 (212) 439 8055
kathy (@) encompassarts.com
encompassarts.com

Rest of the World

Day Macaskill
Cruickshank Cazenove Ltd
97 Old South Lambeth Road
London SW8 1XU
United Kingdom

+44 (0)20 7735 2933
day (@) ccagents.co.uk
cruickshankcazenove.com

Little Women directed by Ella Marchment at Opera Holland Park 2022 all photos (c) Ali Wright

Eight Songs For A Mad King was frankly stunning. This was music theatre that was vividly alive