Directors
Current season
Jeremy Gray is joint artistic director of Bampton Classical Opera and also director of productions. His work has brought together his interests in history, theatre, stage design and music and he has learned to enjoy translating libretti and even fundraising. His directorial work has been consistently well-received, and he has built up an enviable reputation for intelligent humour and freshly accessible productions. He currently teaches at Queen's College London. In more restful days he read theology and history of art at Cambridge and for a PhD on medieval manuscript illumination at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.
Nicola Samer was born in Sydney, Australia and gained her MA in Theatre Directing at Middlesex University, London. Further training included at the Russian Academy of Dramatic Arts in Moscow, the Lincoln Centre Theatre Directors' Lab in New York, NIDA in Sydney and working on attachment with the Royal Opera House. She has directed Sophie Reynold's The Edge (Theatre503); Kenneth Emson's Loyalty Cards and Daniel Kanaber's Bigger then Me (Eyebrow Productions); Fiddler on the Roof (Cambridge Arts Theatre); The 52 Show (Leicester Square Theatre); Elena Penga's Who are our new Friends? (Theatre Lab); Jay Tayloe's Can I get a Kiss from Daisy? (Old Vic, reading); Miss Julie (Sterts Theatre, Cornwall); Justin Martin's Scenes of a Massacre (Custard Factory, Birmingham); Albert Atta's The Last Days of Empire (Pleasance, London); The Tempest (New Theatre, Sydney). She has also worked on Flashdance (West End), Great Expectations (English Touring Theatre & Watford Palace), My Fair Lady (Bronowski Productions, Malaysia, Singapore and Cyprus), KES (Liverpool Everyman Playhouse), UK tours of Aspects of Love, The Witches of Eastwick and The Sound of Music. In opera she has worked on productions with BYO (Eugene Onegin), ROH (Tosca) and Bampton Classical Opera (Benda’s Romeo and Juliet). She is co-founder of IronBark, presenting Australian Theatre in the UK.
Past productions
John Arthur Acis and Galatea, The Choice of Hercules
Alexander Clifton La vera costanza
Clare Dodd assistant: L’infedeltà delusa
Harry
Fehr assistant: Falstaff; Don
Giovanni
Thomas Guthrie The
Philosopher’s
Stone (assistant) ; Waiting
for Figaro (co-director); The Two
Barons of Rocca Azzurra (assistant and revival
director)
Gillian Pitt revival
director: A Comedy of Errors
Jonathan Richards assistant:
La capricciosa corretta
Nicola Samer assistant: Romeo and Juliet
Hannah Smallman assistant: Le pescatrici
Alessandro Talevi assistant:
The Barber of Seville ;
L’infedeltà delusa
