British conductor Stuart Stratford has been appointed by Scottish Opera as the Company’s Music Director after an extensive international search.
Stratford impressed audiences and critics during his recent engagement with Scottish Opera, conducting Janáček’s Jenůfa (2015) to acclaim.
Stuart trained in clarinet and read music at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He went on to study conducting with David Parry and later in Russia, at the Saint Petersburg State Conservatoire for three years with Ilya Aleksandrovich Musin. He was the Junior Fellow in conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 1999 and 2000.
Building on his breadth of professional experience conducting in the UK and internationally, and with opera at the core of his activities, Stuart now brings his talent and vision to Scotland’s national opera company in his first role as Music Director of a major opera company.
In the UK, Stuart has conducted for companies including English National Opera, Opera North, Welsh National Opera, Birmingham Opera Company and conducts regularly at Opera Holland Park. He has conducted most of the UK’s major orchestras and has a particularly strong association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and City of London Sinfonia. Abroad he has recently conducted operas at Finnish National Opera and in St. Gallen, Switzerland and concerts in Portugal and Russia.
Highlights of Stuart’s work include: Satyagraha, English National Opera; Khovanshchina, Birmingham Opera Company; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Faust, Opera North; Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci, Rigoletto, Lucia di Lammermoor, L’amico Fritz, La Forza del Destino and Katya Kabanova Opera Holland Park; Doctor Atomic, Finnish National Opera and the world-staged premiere of Sibelius’ The Maiden in the Tower and the UK-staged premiere of Kashchei the Immortal at the Buxton Festival. Stuart also conducted Scottish Ballet’s The Nutcracker in winter 2014/15.
Stratford will officially join the Scottish Opera on 1 June 2015, and his first performances as Music Director will be announced with the launch of Scottish Opera’s 2015/16 Season in May. In joining Scottish Opera he becomes only the sixth Music Director in the Company’s 53 year history.
Aged 40, Stuart was born in Preston and is half-Scottish (Stuart’s mother is from Clydebank). Stuart’s wife is a pianist and they have an eight year old son.