Matthew Wild

Artist Manager

Ingunn Sighvatsdóttir

ingunn@orlob.net +49 173 2067821

South African-born stage director Matthew Wild has established himself as one the most sought-after music-theatre directors of his generation in Europe, where his productions are earning praise for their conceptual intelligence, visual bravura, musicality and “unquestionably brilliant Personenregie” (NZZ). In 2024, his ground-breaking staging of Wagner’s Tannhäuser for Oper Frankfurt was joint winner of Opernwelt’s “Aufführung des Jahres” Award, and in 2026 he was nominated for Best Direction: Music Theater for the Deutscher Theaterpreis DER FAUST for his production of Britten’s Peter Grimes at Theater Bielefeld. In the 26/27 season, he will return to Oper Frankfurt for Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa and Martinů’s The Greek Passion, alongside debuts at Staatstheater Hannover with Kander & Ebb’s Kiss of the Spider Woman and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein with Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.

In addition to Peter Grimes, in the 25/25 season Mr. Wild made highly successful debuts at Theater Bonn with Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Den Norske Opera with Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Other recent successes include Larson’s Rent at Theater St Gallen, Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa and Humperdinck’s Königskinder for the Tiroler Festspiele Erl, Hermann’s La Cage aux Folles for Staatstheater Kassel and Verdi’s Macbeth for the Hungarian State Opera. In 2022, his critically-lauded staging of Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess for the Theater an der Wien was nominated for four awards at the Österreichische Musiktheaterpreis, including Best Production. Earlier productions in Europe included Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Puccini’s La bohème at Konzert Theater Bern, Janáćek’s Katya Kabanova for the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, and Boesmans’ Julie for NorrlandsOperan and Malmö Opera.

From 2015 to 2021, Mr. Wild was the Artistic Director of Cape Town Opera, where he earned a reputation as a visionary, inspiring and collaborative leader, radically reinvigorating the company’s programming on home soil, while extending its reputation as a world-class touring company. His many productions for CTO included Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, Richard Strauss’ Salome, Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress. More recent work in South Africa has included Brecht/Weill’s Die sieben Todsünden and Handel’s Alcina.

Equally accomplished as a director of musicals, Mr. Wild made his musical theatre debut at the Fugard Theatre in 2013 with O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, a production which smashed box office records over a two-year run and won multiple awards. For the same theatre, he has since directed Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret (2015), Bernstein’s West Side Story (2015 – 2018), Styne’s Funny Girl (2017) and Cyndi Lauper’s Kinky Boots (2019). His European musical theatre debut followed in the same year with a widely celebrated production of Kander and Ebb’s Chicago for the Staatstheater Braunschweig.

Before he made his opera directing debut in 2009, Mr Wild studied Drama and English at the University of Cape Town, worked professionally as an actor and playwright, and worked as a director of spoken theatre, ranging from new plays to Shakespearean comedy. In his home country, he is a two-time recipient of the Fleur du Cap Theatre Award.

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Artist Manager

Ingunn Sighvatsdóttir

ingunn@orlob.net +49 173 2067821

"The immediacy of the acting is complemented by video projections (video by Bibi Abel), lending this scene a intensity that is unusual on the opera stage. In general, the production is deliberately and skillfully radical in its realism. Wild eschews any Cossack kitsch and focuses on the (male) struggle between political opponents and their followers, which claims victims on both sides."

- Faust Kultur

"Director Matthew Wild has solved the puzzle in a superb and unexpected way – by creating an indeterminate dream-like world where time and place seem subordinate and fluid, while many realistic elements are at play. Both the set and costume design are by Katrin Lea Tag, and it is as if the stage images depict a place that tries to appear real, but which nevertheless is not ... The production has delved deep into the darkness of the music, and both a dead and an unborn child have been written in...Wild is not only a director who manages to create coherent ideas, but he has also got the performers to adopt a complete acting style."

- Scene Kunst

"Standing ovations for a blood-soaked and unsparing reckoning with the violent figures of our time: Tchaikovsky depicts the rise and fall of a careerist who knows only the law of the jungle. In South African director Matthew Wild’s production, this is disturbingly relevant and absolutely worth seeing."

- BR Klassik

"Even the opening images in the prologue of the new Tannhäuser at the Frankfurt Opera hint, in a highly imaginative and symbolic way, at what lies ahead in the next four and a half hours; it quickly becomes clear that this production by Matthew Wild is something truly special...Thanks to the scenic synergy between director Matthew Wild and the musical direction of Thomas Guggeis, this performance achieved the ever-anticipated—yet rarely attained—operatic ideal of the “total work of art” in the spirit of Richard Wagner."

- Bachtrack

"Standing ovations and loud cheers for everyone involved brought an extraordinary premiere of Tannhäuser at the Frankfurt Opera to a close on Sunday evening. Although he adds a great deal of pseudo-biographical material and incorporates complex temporal layers in the process, South African director Matthew Wild succeeds in turning his Frankfurt debut into a triumph."

- Musik Heute