Stuart Stratford

Praised for his “intense engagement and energy” (The Telegraph) and his “razor sharp” musical direction (Times Literary Supplement), conductor Stuart Stratford was appointed Music Director of Scottish Opera in 2015.

The 2025/26 Season marks his tenth as Scottish Opera’s Music Director. This season he conducts The Orchestra of Scottish Opera in concert performances featuring selections from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin, Iolanta and The Maid of Orleans, as well as a concert version of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde. His operatic productions for the season include La bohème and The Great Wave for Scottish Opera. He also makes his house debut at State Opera South Australia, conducting Rossini’s La Cenerentola.

Recent Scottish Opera highlights include The Merry Widow (also at Opera Holland Park), Don Pasquale, Oedipus Rex (Edinburgh International Festival), La traviata, Hansel & Gretel, The Barber of Seville, Daphne (Scottish premiere), Il trittico (2023 Critics Circle Award winner and International Opera Awards nominee), Ainadamar (UK staged premiere), Candide, Don Giovanni, The Miserly Knight, Mavra, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Falstaff, Anthropocene (world premiere), and Breaking the Waves (European premiere at EIF). He is passionate about community opera involving amateur choruses, with productions including Oedipus Rex (2024 in Edinburgh), Candide (2022 in Glasgow), and Pagliacci (2018 in Paisley).

Other recent operatic highlights include Peter Grimes (Royal Danish Opera), Aida (Opera Australia), and Lucia di Lammermoor (English National Opera).

In the UK Stratford has conducted for English National Opera, Opera North, Welsh National Opera, Opera Holland Park, Birmingham Opera Company, Edinburgh International Festival and Buxton Festival, as well as Scottish Opera, with a wide breadth of repertoire including La bohème, Il trittico, La Fanciulla del West, Tosca,  Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Giovanni, Cavalleria rusticana, Pagliacci, L’amico Fritz, Iris, Silvano, Falstaff, Rigoletto, Giovanna d’Arco, Lucia di Lammermoor, Orfeo ed Euridice, Eugene Onegin, Iolanta, The Queen of Spades, La forza del Destino, Khovanshchina, Jenůfa, Katya Kabanova, Faust, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Turn of the Screw, Satyagraha, Candide, and Jonathan Dove’s Swanhunter, L’altra Euridice and Tobias and the Angel. Outside the UK, he has worked at Finnish National Opera (Doctor Atomic); Theater St. Gallen (Un ballo in Maschera); with Estonian National Opera at the Birgitta Festival (Faust), and in Hong Kong (A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

Stratford has conducted orchestras and ensembles including the London Philharmonic Orchestra; BBC Philharmonic; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Philharmonia Orchestra; London Symphony Orchestra; City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra; City of London Sinfonia; Manchester Camerata; Porto Symphony Orchestra; Orchestra of the Algarve; Perm Opera and Ballet Theater; Viva Sinfonia; Remix Ensemble; and Ural Symphony Orchestra in Yekaterinburg where he gave the Russian premiere of Momentum (Turnage) and Airport Scenes (Dove).