CARMEN at Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari, Italy...

My new production of CARMEN with Maestro Lorin Maazel conducting opens on 20th January at the Teatro Petruzzelli in Bari...





and there's more to come later in the season...

Teatro Petruzzelli, Bari, Italy... & a new CARMEN!

Here I am in Italy - first day of rehearsal for the new production of CARMEN I'm directing here at the amazing TEATRO PETRUZZELLI - with my long-time & brilliant collaborator Tom Rogers doing the set and costume designs...

The show opens on 20th January 2012...

Back in Beijing - Barber of Seville at NCPA

Hello again from Beijing where I'm directing a new production of Rossini's BARBER OF SEVILLE at the National Centre of Performing Arts - conducted by Maestro Lorin Maazel.

The production is a co-production between the Castleton Festival and the NCPA & opens on 24th November 2011.

Here's a link to the NCPA website with more details..

British Youth Opera - Marriage of Figaro

I've just started rehearsals for my new production of Marriage of Figaro with the brilliant young performers from British Youth Opera - my fourth show for this wonderful company....

Here's a link to the BYO website...

British Youth Opera Homepage

Maestro Lorin Maazel - a personal message -

Lorin Maazel writes following the success of the CASTLETON FESTIVAL 2011

Back from Beijing...

Just back from Beijing, China, where I've been having meetings at the National Centre for the Performing Arts....

I'm going to be directing a new production there this autumn.... more details to follow!

And so to San Francisco..

Here I am at Heathrow Terminal 5 on the start of my long journey to San Francisco - my first time in the city...

I'm making my way to Berkeley to direct Britten's Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring at the building in the picture below - the Zellerbach Hall.

Maestro Lorin Maazel is conducting all the performances...




Follow this link for more news of our Cal Performances residency...

Castleton Festival at CAL Performances

Short Montage of Castleton Festival

Here's a short montage 2 and a half minutes or so - of the Castleton Festival 2010 from the superb documenary maker, Scott Willis...

Castleton Festival Montage

Scott Willis's Film of Castleton Festival 2010

Please watch a brilliant short documentary about Castleton Festival 2010 shot by the excellent Scott Willis here -

Castleton Festival Documentary 2010

It features great footage of some of the new opera productions I directed at Castleton this year...

English National Opera TheatreCraft Masterclass

On Monday 22nd November as part of TheatreCraft 2010 I'll be giving a directing masterclass at English National Opera.

TheatreCraft Masterclasses are for 17-25 year-olds who are interested in pursuing careers in the performing arts.

More information at this website:

English National Opera TheatreCraft Masterclasses 2010

Washington Post on Castleton Festival 2011

Follow this link to the Washington Post's piece about next year's Castleton Festival - by Anne Midgette

The Washington Post on the Castleton Festival 2011

Following this month's Press Launch at the Willard Hotel, Washington DC

Castleton Festival Press Launch on Chinese TV!

Here's the footage from Chinese TV covering our Washington DC Press Launch for the Castleton Festival 2011...

Castleton Festival Washington DC Press Launch on Chinese Television

London - Beijing - London

Just got back to London from Beijing. My first time in China...
I was there for some meetings at the National Centre for the Performing Arts.
Incredible city!
Extraordinary building....

London - Paris - Bath - New York City

Phew - what a week - Monday I was off to Paris for meetings with Maestro Lorin Maazel about the Castleton Festival 2011




On Thursday - off to New York for various meetings & plenty of work with Nick Vaughan, designer, on our new productions for next year...










And, in between, a joyous occasion in Bath - the marriage, at Bath Guildhall,
of my friends Natasha Pryce and William Harris... & a perfect wedding reception at Essington Court in the village of Midford nearby...







Natasha is a brilliant young director & was my assistant when I directed La Fille du Regiment at Opera Holland Park in 2008...

William Harris is the inspired and inspiring leader of the theatre courses at Middlesex University...

And, at the wedding, it was great to meet the Best Man - a man I'd previously known by name only - his name is Torquil MacLeod and he's the producer of Radio 4's excellent Saturday Review.....

Washington Post on Castleton Festival Stavinsky/de Falla Double Bill

Here's a link to Anne Midgette's review of my productions of Stravinsky's SOLDIER'S TALE and de Falla's MASTER PETER'S PUPPET SHOW which played this year at the Castleton Festival...

Washington Post Review of Soldier's Tale/Master Peter's Puppet Show

Castleton Festival 2010 contd..

My production of Britten's BEGGAR'S OPERA opens tonight at the Castleton Festival...

My assistant Jonathan Solari has done a fantastic job getting the production ready...

The entire company have worked very hard to recreate the show...

Financial Times on Trittico at Castleton Festival

Il Trittico, Castleton Festival, US
By George Loomis
Published: July 6 2010
Lorin Maazel began his musical career as a child prodigy and as he enters his ninth decade retains a capacity for music-making that can only be called prodigious. For several years, his estate in Virginia has been a gathering point for young musicians under Maazel’s tutelage, activities that last year blossomed into the Castleton Festival. This year it returns with an enlarged schedule (four crowded July weekends) and an enlarged principal venue.

The opening attraction, a new production of Puccini’s Il Trittico by resident stage director William Kerley, Maazel conducting, shows that it is growing artistically as well, with a slew of talented young singers deployed in Puccini’s triptych of one-act operas. The locales – a river boat for the lurid Il Tabarro, a convent for the religiosity of Suor Angelica, a Florentine townhouse for the romp Gianni Schicchi – demand more than a unit set. Nicholas Vaughan’s design achieves unity by fashioning a detailed boat and a cloistered square out of beige wood.

Yet Gianni Schicchi is the most imaginative of the three. In this tale of deception, the late Buoso Donati’s home has leather-and-chrome furniture and modern art, including a glass-encased stuffed mule – an objet d’art Donati’s’s heirs squabble over in lieu of the live animal Puccini left unseen. Corey Crider’s Gianni Schicchi is convincing, with Matthew Plenk bringing an appealingly light tenor to Rinuccio’s salute to Florence. Joyce El-Khoury showed promise as Schicchi’s daughter, so one was happy to encounter her again, replacing an ill colleague in the title role of Suor Angelica (performed last, in a departure from normal practice). You have to wince at Puccini’s clichéd depiction of convent life, but the plight of Angelica, cast off by her aristocratic family, is hard to resist. El-Khoury’s textured soprano serves the music beautifully, and Maria Isabel Vera is formidable as her cold-hearted aunt, the Principessa.

Il Tabarro yields another excellent soprano, Jessica Klein, in lustrous, resonant voice as Giorgetta. Noah Stewart sings Luigi with such tenorial power that it is almost implausible when Michele (Nicholas Pallesen), Giorgetta’s cuckolded husband, strangles him. Maazel drew an assured performance from his players that nicely projected the music’s colourful details. www.castletonfestival.org


Financial Times on Trittico Castleton Festival

Baltimore Sun on Castleton Trittico

Baltimore Sun on Trittico Castleton Festival

Ionarts: Opening of the Castleton Festival

Ionarts: Opening of the Castleton Festival

Interview with Marlyn Cooley of WETA Classical Radio

Here's a link to a recent radio interview I did: one of the series of Classical Conversations with WETA presenter Marilyn Cooley in connection with my work as Resident Stage Director at the Castleton Festival..

Classical Conversations: William Kerley

Castleton Festival 2010 contd..

There's a piece about the Castleton Festival in this month's Gramophone Mag....

Castleton Festival 2010 contd..

All three productions of TRITTICO brewing nicely - Maestro Maazel back in Castleton & having music calls...

Meant to say I've joined Twitter...

You can follow me at twitter.com/WillKerley

I have a select band of 28 followers....!

Fame at last!

Castleton Festival 2010

Greetings from sultry Virginia...

I'm back at Castleton, this time thankfully with wife Claire and son Thomas & am rehearsing Puccini's TRITTICO in the great new Castleton Festival Tent.

The singers are completely amazing - big stars of the future.

Nick Vaughan has created an incredible set & Rie Ono my fab lighting designer seems to have a bigger rig than ever!

The talented Jonathan Solari is reviving my productions of Beggar's Opera and The Turn of the Screw in the Theatre (Theater) House.

I then go into rehearsals for the de Falla - Master Peter's Puppet Show and Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale.

It's going to a terrific festival. Check out the Castleton Festival web pages, please.

Maestro Maazel gets here on Thursday & I'm so looking forward to working with him again.

The Britten Project - California - 2011

I am delighted to report that my Castleton productions of Britten's ALBERT HERRING and THE RAPE OF LUCRETIA will play at the Zellerbach Hall in March 2011 as part of the CAL season of performances at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Rape of Lucretia is my Chateauville Foundation production which played last year at the Opera Company of Philadelphia. I'm thrilled I'm getting the chance to take the shows out west!

Maestro Lorin Maazel will be conducting the performances of both operas.


Please follow this link for more details of the CAL Performances:

William Kerley directs Britten at Cal Performances 2011

Back from Castleton & going Punk at Guildhall...

Just got back from Castleton, Virginia, where I spent ten days rehearsing Stravinsky's SOLDIER'S TALE and de Falla's MASTER PETER'S PUPPET SHOW for this year's Castleton Festival.

Strange to be in rehearsal at Castleton without any singers. While there's singing in the de Falla, I wanted to work hard with Emily DeCola and her colleagues from The Puppet Kitchen, an amazing puppet company from New York City, and will add the singers later... the story is based on an episode from Cervantes Don Quixote - where our anti-hero gets confused by the plot of a puppet show he sees & ends up destroying both set and puppets - much to the chagrin of Master Peter, the puppet master...

And the Stravinsky (more a piece of music-theatre than an opera) features the talents of a tremendous quartet of actor/dancers with whom I spent the week unlocking the piece with the terrific choreographer, Faye Driscoll.

As soon as I get back to Castleton in mid-June, I'll be straight into rehearsals for our new production, in the Festival Tent, of Puccini's TRITTICO and, since I can't be in two places at once, wanted to have had a look at the action for the Stravinsky/de Falla double bill before then.

Once the Puccini has opened, I'll be straight into rehearsals for the double-bill again - it opens in the last weekend of the Festival - the last week of July.

On another note, I feel immensely lucky that I was able to catch the flight I'd originally booked - on 21st April - but it'd been touch and go for the last week if I'd be able to fly home, or my flight would be cancelled and I'd go to the back of the queue. Plenty of poor souls are still stranded... so I'm not quite sure how it all worked out for me...

Thankfully I made it safely home & on time.... I start rehearsals for my new GSMD production of Britten's ALBERT HERRING on 28th - I think the folk at Guildhall were worried I wouldn't be back in time (so was I!)



This time I'm updating Albert Herring to the 1970s.... power cuts, Thatcher, Punk Rock...



RIP Malcolm Maclaren, the veritable Godfather of Punk.... who's been very much in mind as I've been preparing for rehearsals....

Flying Visit to Valencia

Just got back from an overnight visit to Valencia, Spain, to see The Maestro, in another rather swish hotel, who's there conducting a double bill of operas at the Palau Opera House.

Spent a good day talking through the pieces we're to present at this year's Castleton Festival. The press release about the season has now been published, so I can let you in on the news....

In Valencia I read all the parts myself (!) of Jeremy Sams' excellent translation of Stravinsky's Soldier's Tale, which we're presenting at Castleton in a double bill with de Falla's Master Peter's Puppet Show.


I've cast some hugely talented actor/dancers from New York, and I'm working with a brilliant company called The Puppet Kitchen as well as the excellent Faye Driscoll, the hottest choreographer in NYC.

We're also creating a new production, in the (even bigger this year!) Castleton Festival Tent, of Puccini's 3 one-act operas which together make up his Trittico.

And revivals of my Castleton Productions of Britten's Turn of the Screw and Beggar's Opera.

Please visit www.chateauville.org for more details...

London - NYC - New Haven - Philadelphia - London

I have just got(ten!?) back to London from ten days in New York City, where I was having meetings and holding auditions for my Castleton Festival productions this year.

The Castleton Festival 2010 season is yet to be announced, a press release is imminent, so I can't (yet) reveal here details of the new productions.

But I can let you know that, along with my long time collaborators, the designer Nick Vaughan and the lighting designer Rie Ono, I will be collaborating with Emily DeCola and Eric Wright, the brilliant puppeteers from New York's PUPPET KITCHEN.


I went out to New Haven, Connecticut, to meet Emily and Eric, where they are currently in rehearsal at Yale Rep for the world premiere of a new play by Rinne Groff called Compulsion - it's being directed by the artistic director of the New York Public Theater, Oskar Eustis.

And I'm also thrilled to be working this year at Castleton with a fantastic choreographer called Faye Driscoll.

More details to follow of the exciting new productions and revivals this year at Castleton.

While I was that side of the Atlantic I was also able to go down to Philadelphia to meet my esteemed colleagues Robert Driver and David Devan - who run the marvellous Opera Company of Philadelphia - for whom I directed Britten's Rape of Lucretia last year...

Albert Herring at Guildhall 2010

Pleased to report that I've been invited to direct Britten's ALBERT HERRING at the London Guildhall School of Music and Drama this year.

The performances are on the 9th, 11th, 14th and 16th June 2010 at 7pm.

This will be my fourth production with the talented students of the Guildhall Opera Department & I'm much looking forward to returning there...

The production is designed by Tom Rogers, with lighting by Johanna Town.

Busy Day in London Town....

A productive day: breakfast meeting at the Dorchester Hotel with Maestro Lorin Maazel talking through our plans for next year's Castleton Festival.

Last night I attended a fantastic concert he gave with the Philharmonia Orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.



Mahler's 9th Symphony. What can I say?

....Bloody brilliant.







& then this afternoon, off in the rain to Hackney Road, Shoreditch, for a meeting with designer Tom Rogers about our new production at Guildhall Britten's Albert Herring. The production opens in London on June 9th 2010.

Here are a just a few images from the outstanding work Tom has produced for me since we first worked together on a new production of Britten's Let's Make an Opera at the Jubilee Hall in Aldeburgh.







Oh, and yes - the final one really is a monster computer mouse (!) from our 2007 production of Magic Flute:



You can see more of Tom Rogers' work at his agent Clare Vidal-Hall's website - follow this link:

Designer Tom Rogers at Clare Vidal Hall's agency

British Youth Opera Rake's Progress review at OperaTalent.com...

Here's another review of my recent BYO production of Rake's Progress from Adam Highbury of OperaTalent.com:

Opera Talent Review of BYO Rake's Progress

New York November....

Greetings from New York City!

I'm out here for a whirlwind week of meetings to plan, with my designer, the super-talented Nick Vaughan and Chateauville Executive Director Doug Beck, our Castleton Festival shows for next year.

Designer Nick Vaughan currently has a huge hit on his hands with his new show called LILY'S REVENGE which is currently sold out at a theatre called the HERE ARTS CENTRE...

One of the operas we're working on is by Igor Stravinsky (details to follow..) ....(I was lucky enough to direct my first production of his RAKE'S PROGRESS this summer with the wonderful singers of British Youth Opera - see previous pages)



If I look out from the Chateauville Foundation office window I can see the lights of Essex House. Stravinsky lived the last years of his life here - and died in Essex House in 1971...

BYO Rake's Progress Review from Opera Magazine

Wonders will never cease! A positive review of my British Youth Opera production of THE RAKE'S PROGRESS - by the famous Hugh Canning:

"William Kerley's staging of The Rake's Progress, in William Fricker's spare, atmospheric sets and contemporary costumes - a timely credit-crunch Rake, to be sure - was one of the best I have seen anywhere, and certainly the finest BYO offering I have attended in recent years.

Kerley's Tom, the excellent Nicky Spence, was a vivid creation, a cocky, upwardly-mobile bovver-boy, a dead-cert winner for one of those ghastly but occasionally riveting TV greedfests, Dragon's Den of The Apprentice... He spivved up oleaginously as his fortunes prospered, aided by Derek Welton's charistmatic, Nosteratu-without-the-fangs Nick Shadow. His descent into madness was all the more moving for his earlier fallibility - here was a young man led astray by malevolence and left to bear sole responsibility for his over-optimism and gullibility. Kerley stage-managed the fable brilliantly, lending an uncomfortably topical feel to the Baba scenes, with reptilian party-goers happy to share in Tom's success only to turn into vultures at the auction of his wordly goods. This was a staging that looked chic despite the absence of scenery, and drew its finger-wagging moral trenchantly.

...Peter Robinson and the excellent BYO orchestra matched the slick discipline of this exemplary staging."


Crikey!

New Project News...

I'm currently in preparation for OTHELLO RETOLD which I'm working on as Creative Director for the National Youth Theatre - collaborating with the super-talented Akala of the Hip Hop Shakespeare Company and local artists to make a piece for The Lowry Centre and the Zion Arts Centre in Manchester. In two weeks we're going to work with fifty young artists: actors, MCs, dancers, visual artists, musicians - to make a brand new retelling of the story of Shakespeare's OTHELLO...

Follow this link to the Lowry Website where you can find out more:

Othello Retold - NYT/Hip Hop Shakespeare/BBC Blast