Biography
British director and designer Antony McDonald made his Royal Opera debut in the 1993-4 Season designing sets and costumes for Chérubin. He has since designed sets and costumes for Fearful Symmetries, Cheating, Lying, Stealing and Hidden Variables and costumes for Ebony Concerto and ...now languorous, now wild... for The Royal Ballet, and sets and costumes for Nabucco, Eugene Onegin and Kát’a Kabanová and sets for The Gambler for The Royal Opera. In the 2018/19 Season he directed and designed Hansel and Gretel for The Royal Opera. In the 2019/20 Season he directs and designs the stage premiere of Gerald Barry’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground.
As a director-designer, McDonald’s opera credits include Powder Her Face (Irish National Opera), Der Ring des Nibelungen (Nationale Reisopera), Rusalka, Queen of Spades and Fiddler on the Roof (Grange Park Opera), Lohengrin (Welsh National Opera, Polish National Opera and Greek National Opera), Werther (Bergen National Opera), On the Town (Hyogo Performing Arts Centre), Maria Stuarda (Opera North), L’Enfant et les sortilèges (Bolshoi Theatre), Tristan und Isolde (Opéra national du Rhin), The Importance of Being Earnest (NI Opera), Die Gezeichneten (St Gallen) and Ariadne auf Naxos (Scottish Opera and Opera Holland Park). He has co-directed three productions with Richard Jones, and designed opera for directors including Frederic Wake-Walker, Richard Jones, Robert Carsen, Tim Albery, Daniel Kramer and the late Steven Pimlott, for Vienna State Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, New York, Dutch National Opera, Paris Opéra, Frankfurt Opera, Los Angeles Opera, La Scala, Milan and Glyndebourne Festival among others.
McDonald has also designed for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Royal Court, the Old Vic, the Almeida and the National Theatre among others, and designed prolifically in ballet, including for Second Stride and Scottish Ballet. His many awards include Best Set Design at the 2013 International Opera Awards.
