Stage director Rodula Gaitanou is becoming internationally recognised for her intense, character driven and stylish productions. Rodula is a former member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and lives in London. She was shortlisted in the category “Director of the Year” at the 2019 International Opera Awards.
Recent engagements include Chausson’s Le roi Arthus at Tiroler Festspiele Erl, La Traviata for Den Norske Opera, Oslo, Rusalka for Opera Royal de Wallonie, Liège, Nabucco for Savonlinna Opera Festival, Vanessa for Spoleto Festival USA, Andrea Chenier for St Gallen and Madama Butterfly for Teatro Grande, Brescia. Other highlights include Rodula’s widely acclaimed production of Ariadne auf Naxos for Göteborgsoperan in Sweden, revived at Opera North in 2023; The Barber of Seville at Göteborgsoperan; La clemenza di Tito for Bergen National Opera, a revival of her acclaimed production of La Traviata for Opera Holland Park; Guillaume Tell at Victorian Opera, Australia; Lucia de Lammermoor at Opera Hedeland, Denmark; a widely acclaimed production of Barber’s Vanessa starring Rosalind Lowright in the title role; a double bill of verismo rarities L’oracolo/La Mala Vita for Wexford Opera Festival; Queen of Spades for Opera Holland Park; Pagliacci for Teatro Nacional São Carlos in Portugal; La Cenerentola for Teatro Verdi di Trieste; Tosca for Xi’an Concert Hall, China; and Cosi fan tutte and La Cenerentola for the Greek National Opera.
This past season also saw revivals of her production of Madama Butterfly for Rahvusooper Estonia and Teatro Sociale di Como, Fondazione Teatro Fraschini di Pavia, Fondazione Teatro Amilcare Ponchielli di Cremona, Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo, Teatro del Giglio di Lucca.
Rodula made her American debut at Opera Theatre of St Louis with Carmen and returned to the States in the 23/24 Season with a new production of La Bohème for Minnesota Opera. She directed a celebrated new production of Un Ballo in Maschera for Opera Holland Park, a new production of Don Quichotte at Wexford Festival Opera, and made her German debut with Un Ballo in Maschera at Oldenburgisches Staatstheater.
In the 24/25 season, Rodula will direct a production of La Forza del Destino at Greek National Opera and a new production of La Bohème at Malmö Opera.
Nominations include two Helpmann Awards (Australia 2013) in the “Best Opera Director” and “Best Opera Production” categories for her ROH production of L’isola disabitata presented by the Hobart Baroque Festival. Her productions of Barber’s Vanessa and Massenet’s Don Quichotte at Wexford were nominated in the Irish Times Theatre Awards in the “Best Opera” category (Ireland 2017 and 2020). Her Opera Hedeland production of Lucia di Lammermoor was nominated for “Best Opera Production” in the CPH Awards (Denmark, 2019). Rodula was also the recipient of the highly prestigious ARGO Award for Arts and Culture in 2022.
Rodula trained as a violinist at the Mousikoi Orizontes Conservatory in Athens, studied Musicology at La Sorbonne University in Paris, Opera Staging at Paris 8 – Saint Denis University and joined the Laboratoire d’Etude du Mouvement of the prestigious International Theatre School Jacques Lecoq.
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Puccini: La Boheme
Malmö Opera, March 2025
"A performance that deserved to fill the hall all day long. Skånskans opera critic Lars-Erik Larsson gives the highest marks to Malmö Opera and director Rodula Gaitanou's production of "La bohème"...
Malmö Opera's production of "La bohème", which premiered on Saturday, must be said to be the optimal opera performance. A well-known and beloved work, a consistent and high-class singing team, elaborate set design and costumes. Plus lots of "extra goodies". It was packed at the premiere and it deserves to be seen by packed houses the entire time it is being performed...
We can only continue with the praise: The direction was perfect. Each individual got their own special character and the crowd was truly a crowd. It was a performance in the best spoken theater style where the plot gripped the audience, something you don't see in most opera performances."
Lars-Erik Larsson, Skanska Dagbladet
"a nostalgic and emotionally charged La bohème"
Kristina Lindquist, Dagens Nyheter
"At Malmö Opera, the London-based director Rodula Gaitanou has chosen to move the action from 1830s Paris to 1960s Manhattan, where Andy Warhol is exhibiting at the cool Momus gallery. Yes, why not?... The musically close direction creates close contact between the notes and the acting. That the production so clearly, and so early, allows music to break a deadlock also becomes a hint of what it is that we in the audience are going to experience... Puccini's harmony and large-scale rhythm, Cordelia Chisholm's acoustically grateful scenography and Rodula Gaitanou's placement of the singers in these rooms create the conditions for the catharsis that the singers will now achieve. This catharsis is the very point of “La bohème”, and when it comes, it no longer matters where or when the opera takes place. What happens, happens here and now. A room opens up where everything is both enigmatic and different. You want to laugh and cry and say that yes, yes, that’s exactly how it is!"
Tobias Lund, Scen
"Bohemians have been frozen throughout time. But the magnificent production of La Bohème at Malmö Opera warms. YA's reviewer is impressed:
....the enormous width of the main stage has been used quite ingeniously in the scene's intersection of studios and galleries with a lot of space to fill, as if floating above a brick wall. A place for meetings, longing, pain, the territory of the opera. And of youth!"
Mattias Gejrot, Ystads Allehanda
La Forza del Destino
Greek National Opera, January 2025
“In Rodula Gaitanou’s new production, one of the most compelling I’ve seen of this challenging work, that overture was accompanied by black-and-white video (Dick Straker) showing clerics wrenching children away from a figure who turned out to be their maid, Curra. Set on a bleak seashore, the videos continued to slowly evolve in Bill Viola fashion between the scenes all evening, with the children growing up as Leonora and Carlo and eventually ageing. As the curtain went up on Act 1 it was revealed that the chief protagonist among those clerics had been Calatrava himself, the children’s father (despite being identified in Gaitanou’s synopsis as Cardinal Calatrava). Where most of the scenes had a outdoor, if nocturnal, feel, Calatrava’s home was a claustrophobic bunker and he was armed with a pistol— picked up and accidentally discharged by Leonora’s little brother, Carlo....
The busy stage was brilliantly directed by Gaitanou, with details that really seemed to matter even when they might have surprised Verdi…”
John Allison, Opera Magazine
Verdi: Nabucco
Savolinna Opera Festival, July 2024
With its Greek authors, director Rodula Gaitanou and stage director
Takisin - a stage name and one spelt with a lower case initial - the Babylonian opera has found a whole new point of view. The performance as an interpretation, visual and stage events as a whole is 'poor' theater at its finest. The staging, made from recycled bottles, is stunningly well done. Nabucco in full scale is a treat for all the senses. Without compromising ideas.
Anne Välinoro, Rondo
I dare to predict: this summer's new production of the Savonlinna Opera Festival, Nabucco, will be the new Aida - the 80s version that everyone around Finland was almost ecstatic to see again and again.
The Greek pair Rodula Gaitanou and takis have been working together for a long time [...] because they think along the same lines. They both also want to say something weighty, not just illustrate old works.
Director Rodula Gaitanou uses the choir with skill. The 80 or so singers transform themselves into a group of eco-warriors, sometimes cheering each other on, sometimes forming a familiar chain, sometimes smiling with determination, sometimes into senior, sputtering technocrats.
The audience fell in love with the new production right away. The applause continued for a long time. The whole is harmonious and extraordinarily beautiful, and not only that. The theme of this interpretation, saving nature, is also true on stage. Now we don't just talk beautifully in theory, we do what we talk about.
Eastern Savo
Director Rodula Gaitanou and choreographer Lauren Poulton bring an entertainingly caricatured grandfatherly energy to the technocrats portrayed by the chorus, using proverbial aids as interpretive tools - the various walking sticks and canes that rich old people use to hobble away.
Samuil Tiikkaya, Helsinkin Sanomat
La Bohème
Minnesota Opera (May 2024)
The incarnation that opened Saturday night at St. Paul’s Ordway Music Theatre is the most entertaining and energetic “La Bohème” among the half-dozen I’ve experienced, and quite possibly the most well sung, as well. Boasting a very creative design scheme and performers throwing themselves into their roles enough to inspire tears both onstage and in the house, it’s a production ideal for audience of all experience levels.
… Director Rodula Gaitnaou has clearly convinced her cast to tap into their sense of fun, for these “bohemians” are a lighthearted lot, laughing at life and giving the impression that they’d be in a celebratory mood even if our story didn’t begin on Christmas Eve. … The audience is treated to the most vibrant Parisian street scene I’ve found in a “La Bohème”. There’s a little subplot going on in every direction you look, even as our eyes and ears are drawn to the cauldron of desire and jealousy brewing between Rodolfo’s painter pal Marcello and the proudly promiscuous Musetta.
Rob Hubbard, Star Tribune
Giacomo Puccini’s triumphant opera, La bohème has finally returned to the MN Opera in a beautifully staged production…
Broadway World
An overall incredible production
Lavender Magazine
Rusalka
Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège (January 2024)
The first key to this success is the particularly successful production of Rodula Gaitanou. An ingenious device allows a clear visualization of the different spaces: a large ring marks the dividing line between the worlds, while silver curtains separate humans from aquatic creatures. In the garden, an elegant ornate iron spiral staircase also allows the characters to evolve vertically. The staging, already very beautiful, is completed by superb costumes and, in Act I, by videos evoking the undulating surface of the water, through which an immense moon shines through. Under its light, the undines twirl in their flowing outfits, the three singers mingling with the dancers to illustrate the bubbling of the waves.
Julia Le Brun, Diapason
A real staging challenge, the versatility of the underwater movements requires a certain amount of magic. Director, Rodula Gaitanou confronts this scenic tour de force with a symbolist and poetic décor. … Generous, powerful and evocative, this Rusalka received a deserved ovation from the Liège public, always so receptive.
Soline Heurtebise, Olyrix
Antonín Dvořák’s most important operatic work finally enters the repertoire at the Opéra Royal de Wallonie-Liège, where strangely Rusalka had never been performed, and it does so with a much-applauded new production by the Greek director Rodula Gaitanou.
Alma Torretta, Il Giornale della Musica
Rodula Gaitanou has created a very wise production at the Royal Opera of Wallonia-Liège which makes the undine Rusalka the heroine of an austere and symbolist fable.
David Verdier, Altamusica
Rusalka by Antonín Dvořák created in Prague in 1901 had never before been performed at the Opéra de Wallonie-Liège. It is now done, and done well. … It must be said that Rodula Gaitanou’s staging enriches the tale with its scenic images. Beautiful image, relevant and coherent. … The Rusalka enchanted and rejoiced with her tragedy. It is a success.
Stéphane Gilbart, Crescendo
Andrea Chénier, St Gallen
June 2023
The performance of Greek director Rodula Gaitanou is captivating. She manages to clearly structure the opera … with its labyrinthine storylines. … The four acts flow smoothly into each other, sometimes with a single solo performance, sometimes with all the singers and extras. The tempo changes and the color changes of the costumes are part of it as dramaturgical impulses. The piece does not sway back and forth, but develops grippingly towards the finale … The Hatchet falls. Silence in the monastery courtyard. Then warm applause and a standing ovation
Alex Bänninger, Journal21.ch
Since the eponymous hero and numerous other opera characters actually lived, it is only right that director Rodula Gaitanou brings to the stage in her all-round successful production exactly what Uberto Giordano and his librettist Luigi Illica specify in score and libretto.
Marco Aranowicz, Operagazet
Vanessa
Spoleto Festival USA
Gaitanou's elegant production updates the setting to the 1950s and places it in upstate New York, a decision which helps to underline the timelessness of the opera's themes.
James L. Paulk, ArtsATL
Vanessa feels like a wholehearted embrace: bolder and more contemporary with Rodula Gaitanou's daring stage direction ... the loneliness and isolation of its main character resonated more keenly, the effect enhanced because her icy vigil is self imposed.
Perry Tannenbaum, Classical Voice America
Ariadne auf Naxos
Opera North, 21 February 2023
Rodula Gaitanou’s production of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos is a hugely entertaining treatment of an opera that brings its fair share of problems to any company... the whole show took wings
Robert Beale, The Arts Desk *****
Rodula Gaitanou’s relocation of Strauss’s opera to Rome’s Cinecittà studios brings many gains...
Some directors fail to link the work’s two parts adequately, but Gaitanou proves remarkably consistent here. We watch the cameras roll as the interaction between drama and harlequinade plays itself out with great subtlety, and routines rehearsed in the Prologue are subsequently seen in full.
Tim Ashley, The Guardian ****
Rodula Gaitanou’s relocation of Strauss’ opera to an Italian film studio produces great entertainment... Simply gleams...
George Hall, The Stage ****
Opera North’s Ariadne auf Naxos, first seen in Gothenburg, is a smart, satirical staging with two vocal set-pieces to die for... effervescent...
Rodula Gaitanou’s ingenious staging for Opera North, first seen in Gothenburg, makes the most of the 1916 version, which places a first act about the chaotic creation of the opera as a prologue to the opera itself.
Nicholas Kenyon, The Telegraph ****
Rodula Gaitanou’s ingenious scenario for this co-production… Gaitanou must have micro-directed this multi-talented cast, so compelling was the detail. With Zerbinetta leading the way, Hofmannsthal’s transformation could hardly have been more persuasive…
Martin Dreyer, Opera Magazine
'Carmen'
Opera Theatre of St Louis (May 2022)
Rodula Gaitanou’s inspired guidance, keeps this version of “Carmen” moving at a pleasing pace, allowing the accomplished players to fully exercise their talents.
Mark Bretz, Landue News
Gaitanou’s interpretation breaks away from the trendy projections that have run rampant in theater and opera in recent years in favor of a minimalist set, and more subdued colors. As a result, Bizet’s story of seduction, lust, and betrayal is allowed to breathe fresh air.
Gaitanou has also underscored Bizet’s themes of race, class, and gender without capsizing the production’s uptempo pacing.
Rob Levy, ReviewSTL.com
Le Roi Arthus
Tiroler Festspiele Erl, 23 July 2022
Rodula Gaitanou was extremely successful at engaging the soloists in exciting relationships with each other as well as leading the choir in a masterful way.
Der Opernfreund
Rodula Gaitanou's directorial work strongly encourages intense interaction of all the characters on stage. The focus is clearly not only on the main characters, but extends onto the individual choir members. Static standing around can therefore only be encountered when explicitly used as a special effect.
Wolfgang Wagner, Concerti
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