Paul Kildea

Paul Kildea, Artistic Director of Musica Viva, has previously held artistic posts with the Aldeburgh and Perth festivals and has been Artistic Director of Wigmore Hall and the Four Winds Festival, NSW.

His conducting engagements include appearances with Opera Australia, the Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Ensemble2e2m Paris, Nash Ensemble London, the West Australian, Sydney, Queensland and Adelaide symphony orchestras, Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra, and the Aldeburgh Festival. His most recent conducting engagements include Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Adelaide Festival); Absolute Bird (with Genevieve Lacey) for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; Albert Herring (Melbourne University); Canberra Symphony Orchestra; The Turn of the Screw (Cheltenham Festival and Victorian Opera, for which he received a Green Room Award for Best Conductor of an Opera); La bohème and Candide (Opera Queensland); Cunning Little Vixen, The Magic Flute and Candide (Opera Australia); and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Dialogues des Carmélites (for Hamburg State Opera).

Paul Kildea holds a doctorate from Oxford University, is Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne and serves on the board of the UKARIA Cultural Centre. He is the author of four acclaimed books: Selling Britten, Britten on Music, Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century, and Chopin’s Piano: A Journey Through Romanticism, which is currently being developed as a feature film.