Aidan Lang, General Director Seattle Opera

Aidan Lang arrived at Seattle Opera from Auckland, New Zealand in March 2014 to “shadow” Speight Jenkins and learn the ropes at the company. After a year at the helm, Aidan Lang will tell us about his plans for the 2016-2017 season which will be the first full season he as programmed in his new post.

Selected by the Seattle Opera Board of Trustees after a two-year, international search process, Aidan Lang became Seattle Opera’s General Director on September 1, 2014. He served as General Director of New Zealand Opera from 2006 to 2013, and has also held positions of artistic leadership at Buxton Festival, Glyndebourne, and Opera Zuid. As a freelance director, Lang staged the first Brazilian production of Wagner’s Ring at the historic Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. Other noted productions include Le Comte Ory (Welsh National Opera), Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria (Lisbon), The Turn of the Screw (Salzburg) and the British premieres of The Magic Fountain by Frederick Delius (Scottish Opera) and Cornet Christoph Rilke’s Song of Love and Death by Siegfried Matthus (Glyndebourne). 

As well as introducing Seattle Opera’s 2016/17 season, including an insight into the repertoire planning and artistic choices, Aidan Lang will also demonstrate the conceptual and decision processes used to create a Ring Cycle, using his own 2005 production from Brazil’s historic Teatro Amazonas as an example.

Location: JCC-SF

3200 California Street (at Presidio)

San Francisco, CA 94118