Nigel Lowery
Biography
The British director and designer Nigel Lowery makes his debut at the National Theatre with his production of Ligeti‘s Le Grand Macabre.
He graduated from Central St Martin's School of Art and Design in London. After that he worked in stage design – creating, for example, Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1994–1995), Judith Weir‘s Blond Eckbert at the English National Opera, Jonathan Harvey’s Inquest of Love at La Monnaie, Brussels, and Handel‘s Giulio Cesare at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. He first directed opera at the Batignano Festival, followed by Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia at Covent Garden (1996) and Humperdinck‘s Hänsel und Gretel for Theater Basel (1997). This was followed by productions of Handel's Rinaldo, Mozart‘s La clemenza di Tito and Rossini‘s L’italiana in Algeri for the Staatsoper Berlin, Mozart‘s Le nozze di Figaro for the Staatsoper Stuttgart, Bernstein’s Candide and Glass‘s Akhnaten for the Antwerp Opera. He staged Rossini’s Semiramide in Copenhagen and Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice in Munich, as well as Gluck’s Il Trionfo di Clelia in Athens and Bologna, Rameau’s Platée for De Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam and, more recently, Handel’s Hercules and Wagner’s Meistersinger von Nürnberg in Mannheim. In Hannover, he created all five of John Cage’s Europeras in one evening. He has presented his productions at festivals in Aldeburgh, Berlin, Innsbruck, Barcelona and Schwetzingen. On many operas he worked closely with the choreographer Amir Hosseinpour and the conductor René Jacobs.
He was part of the winning British team at the 1991 Prague Quadrennial.