Paul Curran has directed opera all over the world, in houses like the Royal Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, Teatro la Fenice, Teatro alla Scala, Santa Fe Opera and the Canadian Opera Company. He has created award-winning productions like Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, and he has worked extensively with the operas of Benjamin Britten (including fourteen productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

We had the great luck of meeting Curran during his work on The Rape of Lucretia at The Banff Centre. He spoke with us about the role of the director, the beauty of working with singers, and how he finds Britten’s operas to be continuously fascinating.