Opera Scotland

Stuart Stratford Suggest updates

Born Preston.

English conductor.

Stuart Stratford read Music at Trinity College, Cambridge, studying conducting with David Parry, then spent three years continuing his studies under Ilya Musin at the St Petersburg State Conservatoire. He was Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester in 1999 and 2000.

He first appeared with Scottish Opera in 2014 for an orchestral concert, returning in 2015 for Jenůfa. He was appointed as the company's sixth Music Director, effective from 1 June 2015.

In Britain he has worked frequently with Opera Holland Park, conducting a range of works by Donizetti (Lucia di Lammermoor); Verdi (Rigoletto, La forza del destino); Puccini (La fanciulla del West, Il trittico); Leoncavallo (Pagliacci); Mascagni (Cavalleria rusticana, L'amico Fritz, Iris); Tchaikovsky (Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Iolanta); Janáček (Jenůfa, Kátya Kabanová) and the world premiere of Alice in Wonderland by Will Todd.

He has also conducted at ENO (Satyagraha); Opera North (Faust, A Midsummer Night's Dream); the Buxton Festival (The Maiden in the Tower by Sibelius; Kashchei the Immortal by Rimsky-Korsakov, Orfeo ed Euridice) and Birmingham Opera (Khovanshchina, Candide).

Elsewhere he has appeared with the Finnish National Opera (Doctor Atomic), Estonian National Opera (Faust), and in Austria at St Gallen (Un ballo in maschera).

He worked with Scottish Ballet in the 2014/15 season, conducting The Nutcracker, and has conducted most of the UK's major orchestras. Abroad he has worked with the Remix Ensemble, Porto Symphony, Orchestra of the Algarve, Ural Symphony and Australian Chamber Orchestras.