BrunoRavella

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  • Director

About Bruno

Award-winning director Bruno Ravella has earned a reputation for productions of psychological depth and theatrical clarity.

He enjoys longstanding relationships with a number of leading opera companies across Europe, North America and Australasia, including Garsington Opera, Opéra de Lausanne, Irish National Opera and Opera national du Rhin. Bruno's productions have been seen at Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St Louis, New Zealand Opera, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Teatro Massimo Palermo, Houston Grand Opera, and Opera national de Lorraine.

Highlights of Bruno’s 2026/27 season include a new production of Gounod’s Mireille at Opéra de Lausanne, followed by a return to Seattle Opera for a revival of his 2024 Irish National Opera production of Salome. He remains in the US to bring his acclaimed production of Der Rosenkavalier to Houston Grand Opera and directs a new production of Verdi’s La traviata for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In the UK he returns to Garsington Opera for a revival of his production of Falstaff.

Bruno is particularly drawn to works that place human relationships and psychological complexity at their centre. This has led to an extensive engagement with the operas of Richard Strauss, including Intermezzo, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos and Salome. Educated in France, his work reflects a deep affinity with the French repertoire, notably Massenet’s Werther and Don Quichotte, and Gounod’s Mireille, while his growing Verdi repertoire spans Rigoletto, Macbeth, La Traviata, Falstaff and Stiffelio. Alongside those cornerstones, Bruno has developed a reputation for revealing the theatrical power of neglected works, including Porpora’s Polifemo and Donizetti’s Zoraida di Granata.

His productions have received both critical and public acclaim. Werther at Opera national de Lorraine was awarded the prestigious Prix de la critique Claude Rostand for best Opera Production outside Paris, before being revived in Quebec City, Montpellier and Marseille. His production of Stiffelio, the first staging of the opera in France, received the Forum Opéra ‘Renaissance’ award.

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Contact

Will Pate

Will Pate

Associate Artist Manager
Jack Bushell

Jack Bushell

Assistant Artist Manager

Representation

Worldwide general management with Askonas Holt

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Season Highlights

Oct 2026
Lausanne, Switzerland
Mireille Lausanne Opera
Apr 2027 - May 2027
Houston, USA
Der Rosenkavalier Houston Grand Opera
May 2027 - Jun 2027
St. Louis, USA
La traviata Opera Theatre of St. Louis
Jun 2027 - Jul 2027
Stokenchurch, UK
Falstaff Garsington Opera

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  • Mireille

    Opéra de Lausanne
    Oct 2026

    • Never before has Mireille seemed a work of such magnitude. Ravella and his team have achieved an almost miraculous rehabilitation of this fragile Provençal daughter of Gounod, a work whose sincerity and capacity to move far surpass those of Faust and Roméo et Juliette.

    • Bruno Ravella treats the work with respect for its Provencal origin, without making it folkloric picture theater. Together with the stage designer Barbara de Limburg, he develops a visual language that derives from a central element of the plot. Vincent is a basket weaver. Braiding, natural materials and fabrics therefore become the starting point of the stage design. In a greatly enlarged form, these elements create an almost dreamlike world that is deliberately more poetic than a realistic reproduction of the different locations. Motifs of weaving and braiding run like a red thread through the entire evening. The audience is enthusiastic and celebrates the successful evening with great ovations

    • In short, this staging is masterful, focusing on the essentials and banishing all cheap picturesqueness.

  • Salome

    SeattleOpera
    Oct 2026

    • British stage director Bruno Ravella... plumbed the depths of depravity and played up the many contrasts intrinsic to the story, from dreamlike to stark and ghoulish... Ravella captured the atmosphere of dissoluteness and degeneracy without descending into vulgarity. Ravella’s character portrayals were fascinating: e.g., the juxtaposition of Herod’s decadence with the purity of St. John. The final scene was earth-shattering . The director mined the most captivating qualities of his players, especially in the relationship between Salome and Herod. The latter's locking out the other characters, thus forcing Salome to dance only for him, was especially effective.

  • The Barber of Seville

    Grange Park Opera
    Jun 2026 - Jul 2026

    • Bruno Ravella’s stylish staging embraces all the sparkle, verve and sheer theatrical joie de vivre that make Barbiere such an enduring delight. This is Rossini in top gear: witty, fast-moving and gloriously unconcerned with subtlety when exuberance will do the job infinitely better. The result is an evening that positively crackles with energy from beginning to end.

    • Fast-paced and brilliantly staged production from Bruno Ravella.

    • This is a production conceived and directed with joie de vivre at its heart, and executed by its cast with energy and merriment.

    • It is the contribution of the director and set designer, Bruno Ravella and Francis O’Connor, that grabs you immediately as the familiar overture strikes up in the pit.

  • Der Rosenkavalier

    Garsington Opera
    May 2026 - Jun 2026

    • What a joy this was. To see Rosenkavalier as Richard Strauss intended it. Garsington’s production by Bruno Ravella is absolutely not to be missed.

    • Bruno Ravella’s production for Garsington taps into that dramaturgical sophistication brilliantly and entertainingly by playing around with notions of different eras and places as something of a comical fantasy, while remaining true to the work’s spirit of opera buffa and overt theatricality.

  • Don Quichotte

    Lausanne Opera
    Oct 2025

    • All in black, white, and red, the show is beautiful and effective. To stage what is probably the only one of Massenet's last operas to be regularly revived, Bruno Ravella found a solution which, in retrospect, seems quite simple: to adopt the view not of the outside world on Don Quixote, but of Don Quixote on the outside world.

    • Presented for the first time and running until 12 October at the Lausanne Opera House, this heroic comedy is enriched with touching humanity thanks to Bruno Ravella’s vision.

    • Jules Massenet’s last opera is transported into a world of enchantment and disenchanted celebration by director Bruno Ravella at the Lausanne Opera. A work with a unique tone that touches the audience with its sincerity.

    • A little-known work that is sublimated here by both Bruno Ravella’s staging and the excellent vocal cast (…) The return of Jules Massenet’s moving, refined, and accessible music to Lausanne is thus a complete success and was warmly applauded on Sunday evening at the premiere.

      • RTS
      • 07 October 2026