Laurent Pelly Director

Season 23/24 Artist

Theatre and opera stage director, Laurent Pelly always designs the costumes - and occasionally the sets- for all of his productions. 

Well-known on major international stages such as the Paris Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, the Metropolitan Opera, the Teatro Real in Madrid, La Monnaie in Brussels and the Glyndebourne Festival, he has directed the Cargo / Centre Dramatique National des Alpes in Grenoble and co-directed the Théâtre National de Toulouse from 2008 to 2018, with Agathe Mélinand. 

With a natural inclination for the French (Manon, Cendrillon, Pelléas et Mélisande, L'Étoile, L'Enfant et les sortilèges) and Italian (Don Pasquale, La Cenerentola, La Traviata, Falstaff) opera repertoires, his curiosity has driven him in recent years to other composers, notably Russian and Czech (The Golden Cockerel, The Love for Three Oranges, The Cunning Little Vixen). 

At the Paris Opera, he has staged Ariadne auf Naxos, Giulio Cesare, La Fille du Régiment, I Puritani, Platée, L'Heure espagnole/Gianni Schicchi and L’Elisir d'amore. A specialist in Offenbach, he has directed Bluebeard, King Carrot, La Vie Parisienne, La Belle Hélène, The Grand Duchess of Gérolstein, The Tales of Hoffmann and The Trip to the Moon. His work also includes musical theatre (Candide, L'Opéra de quat'sous, Mahagonny). 

In the theatre, he has directed Ionesco's The Bald Cantatrice, Aristophanes' The Birds, Goldoni's The Green Bird, and Shakespeare's Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 2021-2022 he has staged the first French theatre production of Chase's Harvey at the Théâtre National Populaire in Villeurbanne and on tour. 

New opera productions include A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Lille Opera, Cosí fan tutte at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Poulenc's The Human Voice and Les Mamelles de Tirésias for the Glyndebourne Festival, Lakmé at the Opéra Comique and Eugene Onegin at La Monnaie in Brussels.