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Biography

South African-born stage director Matthew Wild has established himself as one the most sought-after 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 his breakthrough 2023-24 season, Mr. Wild’s staging of Wagner’s Tannhäuser for Oper Frankfurt was joint winner of Opernwelt’s Production of the Year Award, while his productions of Larson’s Rent at Konzert Theater St Gallen and Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa for the Tiroler Festspiele Erl also won widespread acclaim.

Highlights of the 2022-23 season included new productions of Weill and Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden and Handel’s Alcina in Cape Town, as well as a revival of his production of Humperdinck's Königskinder at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl. 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 Overall Production. Earlier productions in Europe included Mozart's Don Giovanni and Puccini's La bohème at Konzert Theater Bern, 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. His many productions for the company 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.

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 Kander and Ebb’s Chicago for the Staatstheater Braunschweig.

Before he made his opera directing debut in Sweden 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.

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Artist Website

www.matthewwild.co.za

Management

General Management

Artist Manager

Ingunn Sighvatsdóttir
Artist Manager
ingunn@orlob.net
Mobil: +49-173-2 067 821

Press

News

Shakespearean dystopia in Budapest

Following his immensely successful Tannhäuser (Oper Frankfurt) and Mazeppa (Tiroler Festspiele Erl) of last season, Matthew Wild can now present his first staging for the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest. The new production of Verdi's Macbeth, "a strikingly acute psychological exploration of overwhelming guilt", will celebrate its premiere on February 22nd, 2025
Set in a speculative, independent Scotland a few decades in the future (following an imagined collapse of the United Kingdom) where democracy has given way to authoritarian dynasty rule, the production is sure to be thought-provoking!
The set is designed by Sebastian Hannak, with whom Wild already collaborated once this season (Cage aux Folles in Kassel), and Principal Conductor Martin Rajna is conducting.

Further performance dates:
26/28 February & 02/05/07/09 March 2025

"Performance of the Year"

We were delighted and proud to read the announcement of this year's ‘Performance of the Year’ by the ‘Opernwelt’ magazine! Five new productions share this title, including Matthew Wild's celebrated ‘Tannhäuser’ at the Frankfurt Opera, in which the BOM singers Andreas Bauer Kanabas (Landgraf Hermann) and Domen Krizaj (Wolfram von Eschenbach) shone with great role portraits.
In addition to Wild's staging, which “achieved the always anticipated - but rarely achieved - operatic ideal of the Gesamtkunstwerk in the sense of Richard Wagner” (bachtrack.com), the production ‘The Greek Passion’ by Simon Stone from the 2023 Salzburg Festival, in which Scott Wilde appeared on stage as The Old Man, was also honoured.
The other three winners were ‘Moses und Aron’ in Bonn, ‘Queen of Spades’ in Lyon and ‘Die Passagierin’ in Munich.