ELLA MARCHMENT
OPERA Director
ARTISTIC Director
ProfessoR
SPEAKER
ELLA MARCHMENT
Award-winning Opera Director & Artistic Director
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.
Artistic Director
Ella 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.
LE ROI DE LAHORE
International Opera Awards nomination, 2023
‘Wow-factor level of glamour’
Awards
Ella’s production of Hydrogen Jukebox won the National Opera Association’s Opera Production Award for 2022–2023.
Ella has also received two International Opera Awards nominations: Le Roi de Lahore (Dorset Opera) was nominated as the Best Rediscovered Work in 2023, and L’aube rouge (Wexford Festival Opera) was nominated as the Best Rediscovered Work in 2024.
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 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.
HYDROGEN JUKEBOX
NOA Opera Production Award, 2022–2023
‘Eight Songs For A Mad King was frankly stunning. This was music theatre that was vividly alive’
LITTLE WOMEN
Opera Holland Park
Professor, Speaker, Writer, Charity Founder
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 broadcasts hosted by Opera America, Opera Vision, Dallas Opera, OperaCast, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 4, Channel 4, RTÉ, and Resonance FM.
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.
‘A genuinely imaginative fusion of sound and screen that manages to say something worthwhile’
INTERNATIONAL OPERA AWARDS
Teatro Real, Madrid
SEARCH
L’AUBE ROUGE
Wexford Opera, Eire
‘Something great here rises’
Contact
Ella Marchment is represented by Kathy Olsen of Encompass Arts in the USA and North America, and by Day Macaskill of Cruickshank Cazenove in the rest of the world
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