boris orlob management

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 2024, his ground-breaking staging of Wagner’s Tannhäuser for Oper Frankfurt was joint winner of Opernwelt’s "Aufführung des Jahres” Award. In the 25/26 season, he makes house debuts at Theater Bielefeld (Peter Grimes), Theater Bonn (Il barbiere di Siviglia) and Norwegian National Opera (Le nozze di Figaro).

Notable recent successes include Larson’s Rent at Theater St Gallen, Tchaikovsky’s Mazeppa 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.

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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

A haunting fisherman's mystery

Get ready for an evening of drama, rumours, suspicion and mystery, when the curtains fall for Matthew Wild's new staging of Britten's Peter Grimes! In the South African's production, the uncertainty of the guilt or innocence of Peter Grimes is pushed to the maximum, resulting in a dramatic showcase of the destructive power of collective judgment.
Wild's gripping take on Britten's classic celebrates its premiere on October 11, 2025 at Theater Bielefeld under the musical direction of new GMD Robin Davis.

All performance dates:
Oct 11/21/26/29, Nov 02/11/29, Dec 18, 2025
& Jan 09/30, 2026

"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.