Directors // Michael Gieleta

MICHAEL GIELETA is a freelance director and currently holds the role of Artistic Director of the Cherub Company.  Most recently, Michael could be seen reprising his direction of Peter Nichols’s new play Lingua Franca for the 2010 Brits Off-Broadway series at 59E59 Theatres in New York, as well as directing Smetana’s Hubička for Wexford Festival Opera.  The Sunday Times identified Michael’s “devastatingly truthful staging...as near to perfection as any I have attended," while The Stage praised his work as "flawlessly judged."  Michael trained at Oxford, Milan and Warsaw universities; he was a trainee director at the National Theatre Studio in London. 

THEATRE  the world premiere of Peter Nichols's Lingua Franca (Finborough Theatre), Tom  Stoppard’s Artist Descending a Staircase (Old Red Lion), Glyn Maxwell’s  Mimi and the Stalker  (Theatre 503), Le Mariage by David Lescot and Fragile! by Tena Stivicic (Arcola Theatre), Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams by Nilo Cruz (Finborough Theatre), Change of Heart by Rosemary Friedman and Last Song of the Nightingale by Peter Quilter (New End), Twelfth Night (Haugesund Festiviteten, Norway), The Marys by Wally Daly (Southwark Playhouse and Yvonne Arnaud, Guildford),  A Perfect Ganesh by Terrence McNally  (Gielgud Theatre),  The Way of the World (Rose Bruford),  The Seagull and Two for the Seesaw  (Old Fire Station, Oxford),  Scenes from an Execution by Howard Barker, White Chateaux by Reginald Berkeley and The Stronger by Stringberg (Minerva Theatre, Chichester).

Michael also directed two acclaimed production of Stephen Sondheim's work: Company (Oxford Playhouse) and Anyone Can Whistle (Bridewell Theatre)

Associate Director credits include:  Franco Zeffirelli’s Absolutely!(perhaps) by Pirandello ( starring Joan Plowright) West End of London; The Tempest  (RSC); Heartbreak House and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia (Chichester Festival Theatre).

Michael directs as a visiting artist at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and is one of the directors of its Shakespeare Summer School.

OPERA
Manon (Cape Town Opera); Cavalleria Rusticana, I Pagliacci, Lucia di Lammermoor , Tosca, Madama Butterfly, L’Elisir d’Amore, Don Pasquale (State Theatre, Pretoria), Eugene Onegin, Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor, Oberon, Il Trovatore, Ernani and Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Opera Integra), Samson and Dalilah (Vision Opera), Blood Rose (Dulwich Festvial) .

His Associate Director credits include: Francesca Zambello’s production of The Queen of Spades (Royal Opera House, Covent Garden); Nikolaus Lehnhoff ‘s production of Katya Kabanova  and David McVicar’s Carmen at Glyndebourne Opera Festival.