David Pountney studierte in seiner Heimatstadt Oxford und an der Universität Cambridge. Sein internationaler Durchbruch als Regisseur gelang ihm 1972 mit Katja Kabanova am Wexford Festival. 1975-80 war er Szenischer Leiter der Scottish Opera, wo er – in Zusammenarbeit mit der Welsh National Opera – mit seinem Janáček-Zyklus Aufsehen erregte. Als Szenischer Leiter der English National Opera inszenierte er 1983-1993 neben vielen anderen Werken Dr. Faustus, Rusalka, Hänsel und Gretel, The Fairy Queen und Lady Macbeth von Mzensk. In seiner Regie wurden Glass’ Satyagraha (Rotterdam) und The Voyage (New Yorker Met) sowie Werke von Maxwell Davies, Holloway, Harvey, Blake und Osborne uraufgeführt. Regelmäßig arbeitet er u.a. an der Wiener Staatsoper (Rienzi, Guglielmo Tell, Jenufa), Zürich (Simplicius, L’Amore dei tre re, Macbeth, Benvenuto Cellini, Peter Grimes) und bei den Bregenzer Festspielen (2004 Kurt Weills Der Kuhhandel und 2005 Maskerade von Carl Nielsen). Beim Orkney Festival führte er bei Mr. Emmet Takes a Walk Regie, einem neuen Musiktheater von Peter Maxwell Davies, wofür David Pountney das Libretto verfasste. Für seine Martinu-Inszenierungen von Julietta (Opera North) und Griechische Passion (Bregenzer Festspiele/Royal Opera Covent Garden) wurde er in Prag mit der Martinu-Medaille ausgezeichnet. Zu den Inszenierungen der jüngsten Zeit gehören Die Soldaten für die RuhrTriennale, L’Etoile in Zurich, Khovanshchina für die Welsh National Opera sowie Playing Away für die Bregenzer Festspiele. Außerdem führte er Regie bei La Juive am Züricher Opernhaus und Carmen am Moskauer Bolshoi Theater. Eines seiner zukünftigen Projekte ist Tristan und Isolde an der Oper Köln.
Für seine Tätigkeit wurden David Pountney die Titel „Commander of the British Empire“ und „Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres“ verliehen.
 

“I was born in the city of Oxford in 1947, where my parents had moved having been bombed out of their homes in Birmingham. Anyway, Oxford is a much nicer city than Birmingham! I was brought up in an old mill house with two streams running through the garden. At the age of 7 I went away to school in Cambridge as I had won a place as a chorister in St. John’s College Choir.

When I was 13 I went on a music scholarship (I played the trumpet.) to Radley College – also one of those rather traditional English boarding schools, and then back to Cambridge as a University student where I read History and English literature. I also played my trumpet in the National Youth Orchestra, which was a very important part of my education. While I was at Cambridge I started to direct operas as a parallel activity to my studies, and in fact during

my time as a student I directed 9 operas altogether, and ran the University Opera Society. This meant that when I left University I was quite a well qualified director by practice, though I had never studied directing. Sometimes doing is as good as learning! I got a job as an assistant director at Scottish Opera in Glasgow – which was then for me probably a more foreign place than Vorarlberg is now! I stayed there for ten years, working my way up in the company, and beginning to do international free-lance directing, and then became head of productions at the English National Opera in London, and therefore one of the three people in charge of that company. In 1989 I did my first production in Bregenz – Der Fliegender Holländer.

After ten years at ENO, we all felt it was time to move on, and I became a freelance director, moving around between England, Japan, America, and many central European cities. Finally I decided it was time to settle down, and had the immense good fortune to be appointed as Intendant of the Bregenz festival.

I have two children from my first marriage, who are both well into their twenties now. My son makes drum and bass music – you can check him out on Itunes under “Culture Shock”, and my daughter is trying to be a classical soprano singer. I am now married to another opera director, Nicola Raab, and we live in France, so somehow I have become a real ‘European’! “

Foto copyright: Karl Forsterkleiner

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