Tim Hopkins

Director / Film Maker / Designer

Tim Hopkins

 

Tim Hopkins

Tim began directing opera productions in 1989, and designing scenery in 1998. He is interested in performance disciplines of many kinds, traditional and contemporary, and in uses of historic and new technologies, including moving image, incorporating them into several shows since 1994.  Starting out as an interpretive artist, he now also creates original works, alone and in collaboration.

He has been commissioned to direct new productions of both historic and contemporary repertoire for The Royal Opera, Welsh National Opera, English National Opera, Theatre Basel, Buhnen Graz, Staatsoper Hannover, Opera North, Teatro dell'Opera Roma, Bayerische Staatsoper Festspiel, Wexford Festival, Glimmerglass, ETO, DGOS, Alternative Lyrique Paris, Almeida Opera, Aldeburgh Festival, Channel Four, Batignano Festival, BBC and others.  He has worked with several composers across generations, such as Luciano Berio, Harrison Birtwistle, Judith Weir, and Lionel Bart, and Tansy Davies, Dai Fujikura, Mira Calix and Claudia Molitor.

In 2001 he was awarded a NESTA Fellowship to look at lyric theatre and new technology, and consider how performance traditions could engage with the future.  This was undertaken full time from 2002 to 2005, and extended to a consideration of European opera practice in this area. 

This period also saw a shift in focus in his work from interpretive art towards making new pieces, often in collaboration with others. The Fellowship exposed him to a wide range of practice, through involvement in projects, observing others at work, or specialist guidance. For example, in the case of film, David Curtis, Simon Pummell, Walter Donahue and Michael Mann acted as mentors and advisers.  In the case of opera this included research visits to intendants in Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Dresden, Hamburg, Theatre an der Wien, and Basel and Hannover (where he also directed.)

In 2006 Hopkins fully resumed freelance practice, directing opera repertoire, and now also making more new work.  This phase saw the site-specific opera Elephant and Castle, made with collaborators Tansy Davies, Mira Calix, Pippa Nissen, and Blake Morrison for Aldeburgh; the adaptation and direction of the quartet from Mozart’s Seraglio in Mozart Lovers for Channel Four; a live media-theatre approach to Britten’s opera for TV, Owen Wingrave, for The Royal Opera.

In 2007 he was awarded an AHRC Fellowship in the Creative and Performing Arts, hosted by the Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre at the University of Sussex, running part-time until 2012. This research context supported three new performance projects, Give Me Your Blessing…,The Lost Chord and TV Opera, each exploring lyric theater traditions in relation to new media, focusing respectively on Stravinsky and folk music, the Victorian creative imagination, and new ways of mediating operatic performance on screen.  His relationship with Sussex continues, as a part-time Research Fellow in experimental music theatre.

His freelance practice continues concurrently, recently as creative director of Proms Music Walk 2012 - a context for new short commissions by Alvin Curran, Judith Weir, David Sawer, Claudia Molitor, Alwynne Pritchard, Sound Intermedia, and others, in response to locations around Exhibition Road - a theme-park for 19th Century concepts of creativity - and marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Cage. With independent producer Joana Seguro he is currently developing a new music platform for Sound and Music.  He is writing a short film he hopes to direct for BBC Films.  He has been invited by Welsh National Opera to help develop their creative use of digital media.

He has translated operas from Italian and French for performance in English, and contributed to academic publications and research events, organising the conference ‘Astonished and Terrified - opera and the transformation of the world by technology’ at Sussex in 2012. 

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Recent Print publication

Give Me Your Blessing for I go To a Foreign Land.
An Instance in visual form of an intermedial opera, in Mapping Intermediality in Performance [Bay-Cheng, Chiel, Lavender, Nelson, eds.]  Miniature staged photography.
Amsterdam University Press, 2010

Performing Translations

Radamisto  Handel; original libretto Nicola Franceso Haym, after Domenico Lalli and Matteo Norris (for Opera North)

The Tales of Hoffmann  Offenbach; original libretto Jules Barbier, after ETA Hoffmann (for ENO)

2013
Sound Track

New context for contemporary composer, with Joana Seguro.
Sound and Music
2012

Proms Music Walk

WebsiteI mp3I mobile live performance/ audience upload.
11 new commissions from contemporary composers, each related to a physical location around Exhibition Road and Hyde Park. Creative direction, concept.     www.promsmusicwalk.com
BBC Proms


Terretektohr

Xenakis’ piece for 88 players and audience, with promenade site-specific events. Concept, direction.
Produced for COLAB with students                                               
Trinity Laban

The Tales of Hoffmann     

English translation of Offenbach’s opera, Richard Jones production
ENO

Research Fellowship        

Centre for Research in Opera and Music Theatre, University of Sussex.
Part-time from 2012. See biography.

AHRC Fellowship

As above. Part-time to 2012. See biography
2011

Automatic Writing

Media theatre piece built around orchestral performance. Conductor Nicholas Collon.
With thriller writer Peter Straub. Script, concept, direction, visual design
Aurora Orchestra, LSO St Lukes

Berio Duets, Stockhausen Tierkreis

Media theatre piece built around performance                  
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
 

Bart!, Abiding Love, Cox and Box, Reveal

TV projects. Subjects: Lionel Bart, Strauss’ four last songs, early G and S, the letter scene from Tchaikovsky’s Eugen Onegin. Development commission.
BBC TV Music, Cardiff

Transformations

Media theatre piece for children, built around orchestral performance programmed by John Woolrich, works by Tansy Davies, Gerald Barry, Maxwell-Davies, Joe Cutler, Thomas Ades, Harrison Birtwistle, Bryn Harrison. Direction, design.
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

Dido and Aeneas  Purcell 

Direction, design.
Dartington

La Voix Humaine  Poulenc

Direction, design.
Belgrade, Serbia

2010 - 09

The Lost Chord II              

New music theatre / media theatre work inspired by Sullivan, Balfe, Tennyson, and the Victorian creative imagination. Script, direction.
Opera North

The Mask Of Orpheus, Act 2  Birtwistle 

Direction
BBC Proms

Die Entführung aus dem Serail  Mozart       

Direction, scenic design.
Costume, Gideon DaveyLighting Zerlina Hughes
Adaptation Nick Ridout, with Hopkins
Opera North

Give me your Blessing, For I go to a foreign land     

Collaboration with composer Elena Langer and folk performers from Prokrovsky Ensemble, Taganka Theatre, Moscow Lyric theatre / media theatre piece, about the state of authenticity times of technological change. Inspired by Stravinsky’s Les Noces.
The Clore Studio, ROH and a virtual Clore Studio on Second Life
ROH2, Opera Genesis

Of Thee I Sing, Let em Eat Cake  G and I Gershwin, and Morrie Ryskind. 

Satires on American politics.
Scenic Design, Hopkins. Direction, Caroline Gawn
Opera North

2008 - 07

The Tales of Hoffmann Offenbach. 

Direction. Design, Anthony Baker.
MWO

Owen Wingrave  Britten

Direction, scenic design, video design. Costume, Gideon Davey. Lighting, Wolfgang Goebbel.
The Royal Opera

Elephant and Castle

Directed and devised, with Pippa Nissen (design, film, architectural concept) Tansy Davies, Mira Calix (composers) Blake Morrison (Libretto.)
A new site-specific opera about the Elephant and Castle Shopping Centre in South London, created for performance around the buildings and landscape of Snape Maltings, Suffolk
London Artists Projects, Aldeburgh Music, Aldeburgh Festival

The Lost Chord 1

Video installation and performance piece, commissioned by Opera North as part of Picture House, at Belsay Hall, Northumberland.
Opera North / English Heritage

A - Z

Media Theatre piece for children built around orchestral performances, programmed by John Woolrich, with works by Andriessen, Xenakis,Gerald Barry, Messiaen, Woolrich, Davies, and Zappa
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group

2006 - 05

Mozart Lovers    

Four x 3 minute films, adapting the quartet from Mozart's Seraglio.  Direction, screenplay
Tiger Aspect, Channel Four TV

Come and Go

Media Theatre piece built around orchestral performances, works by Stravinsky, Walton, Rivueltas, Woolrich    . The Sage, Gateshead.
Northern Sinfonia

2002 - 05
NESTA Fellowship

See biography

2002 - 01
The Rake's Progress Stravinsky 

Direction, Scenic design, video co-design. Costume, Tania Spooner. Video co-design, Pippa Nissen
Staatsoper Hannover

Mare Nostrum     Kagel     

 

Direction, Scenic design, video co-design.
Costume, Tania Spooner. Video co-design, Pippa Nissen
Theatre Basel

Only The Names Have Been Changed II                     

 

Direction, performance, Hopkins. Media theatre play by Nick Ridout, with visual artist Sigune Hamann.
Set in the world of Italian terror politics in the 1970s, the so-called ‘Years of Lead’
Munich Festspiel

Kantan, Damask Drum      Goehr

 

Direction, scenic design.  Costume, Tania Spooner
Aldeburgh Festival / Almeida Opera

The Forest Murmurs - an adventure in the German Romantic Imagination

                             

Direction, scenic design, video design. Costume, Stephen Rodwell, Dramaturg, Meredith Oakes

Conductor, Steven Sloane.  Media Theatre work exploring the sound world, visuality, conceptual journey of work by Beethoven, Berg, Schumann, Schubert, Wagner, Mahler, Marschner, texts by Tieck, Schlegel, Hegel
Opera North

2000

Eugene Onegin  Tchaikovsky.

Direction, scenic and video design. Costume, Tania Spooner.  Lighting, Hermann Muntzer
Theater Basel

Radamisto Handel

Direction.   Design, Charles Edwardes
Opera North

A-Ronné  Berio

 

Direction, film design. Costume Tania Spooner.
Site specific staging of Berio’s work for five voices about a cycle of life.  Presented at the former Gainsborough Film Studios, on the eve of the building’s redevelopment.
Almeida Opera at the
Gainsborough Studios

1999 -89

Zwei Acte, Con Voci, Presentation  Kagel

Direction, scenic design. Costume Tania Spooner
Almeida Opera

The Golden Cockerell  Rimsky-Korsakov

 

Direction, film design.
Design: Tony Baker Lighting: Wolfgang Goebbel
The Royal Opera

Maria Stuarda  Donizetti

 

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery. Lighting, Hermann Muntzer
Theater Basel

Only The Names have Been Changed I

See above, 2001. First iteration of piece subsequently staged in Munich
BAC, London

Il Trovatore Verdi

 

Direction
Design, Sigune Hamann
Oper Bühnen Graz

Iphigenie en Aulide  Gluck

 

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery
Opera North

Liederkreis  Schubert

Experimental video with students.  Richard Jackson, Baritone
Central St Martins

1998,7,6
Annual spring residency for National Opera Studio at ENO works

 

Exploring post-1945 and contemporary opera repertoire
ENO Works

The Golden Cockerel Rimsky-Korsakov

 

Direction
Design, Tony Baker.  Lighting, Giuseppe Di Iorio.
Shadow play, Teatro Gioco Vita.
Teatro Dell’Opera, Roma

Cosi Fan Tutte   Mozart

Direction
Design, Tony Baker
Welsh National Opera

The Yeomen of The Guard  Gilbert and Sullivan

 

Direction
Scenic Design, Peter J Davidson.  Costume, Nicky Gillibrand
Welsh National Opera, The Royal Opera, Glimmerglass

Blond Eckbert  Judith Weir

 

Premiere of Judith Weir's opera based on a text by Ludwig Tieck
Direction, film design.
Design, Nigel Lowery.  Lighting design, Wolfgang Goebbel
35 mm film realised by Simon Pummell.
Shadow Puppetry by artists from Souhami Puppets
Televised in an adapted form by Channel Four
ENO

La Vera Storia  Berio (also conducted)

 

Direction
Design, Charles Edwardes
BBC Symphony Orchestra, South Bank Centre

Zampa  Hérold

 

Direction
Design, Charles Edwardes 
Wexford Festival

Fast and Dirty

 

Fast collaborations as part of a large improvisatory company of practitioners, assembled by Ian Spink and Anthony Macdonald   Second Stride

Mario and The Magician  Stephen Oliver, after Thomas Mann’s story

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery
ENO / Almeida Opera

Falstaff Verdi

Direction
Design, Peter J Davison
English Touring Opera

Cosi Fan Tutte  Mozart

Direction
Design, Anthony Baker 
Welsh National Opera

ENO Soundbites  
Short small works by Jonathan Dove, Giles Chaundy, Judith Weir

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery
ENO, presented at the Almeida

The Gondoliers  Gilbert and Sullivan   

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery
New D’Oyle Carte Opera Company, Alexandra Theatre, Birmingham  
                        

Carmen Bizet

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery (after his designs for Richard Jones’ production of 1988)
Opera North

L'Oca del Cairo Mozart; Stephen Oliver (completing Mozart’s unfinished work in a modern idiom)

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery
Batignano Festival, Italy

Peter Grimes  Britten

 

Direction
Design, Peter, J Davidson
Dublin Grand Opera Society

L'Aio nell’ Imbarazzo Donizetti

Direction
Design, Peter J Davidson
Batignano Festival, Italy

Hastings Spring  Jonathan Dove. Libretto Nicholas Ridout

Direction
Scenic design, Nigel Lowery.  Costume design, Bettina Muntzer, Choreography, Melly Still
Glyndebourne Education Dept

Lo Schiavo di Sua Moglie Provencale.  The first Neapolitan opera, 1671

Direction
Design, Nigel Lowery
Batignano Festival, Italy

   
   
Agent - Jo Probitts

 


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last update : 29 April, 2013