VICTORIA STEVENS
stage director
RECENT AND UPCOMING ENGAGEMENTS
- Philip Glass' The Fall of the House of Usher, at the Staatsoper Hannover;
- Verdi's Otello, at the Staatstheater Mainz;
- J. Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, at the Wilhelma Theater;
- Dove's The Monster in the Maze, at the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg;
- Händel's Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno and Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, at the Nationaltheater Mannheim.
BIOGRAPHY
South African stage director Victoria Stevens is known for her intensely psychological stagings across opera and theatre. Her work is characterised by the centralisation of female experiences from canonical to contemporary opera, a highly defined, filmic visual aesthetic and a strong instinct for physical theatre.
Victoria obtained a master’s degree in Stage Direction and Dramaturgy from the Verona Accademia per l'Opera Italiana and a Master’s in Opera Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s prestigious Alexander Gibson Opera School, where she was the ABRSM international scholar. She also holds an Honours degree in Western Classical Music from the University of Cape Town. Her experience and instincts as an opera singer guide her collaborative work with other singing actors. She is the 2nd prize winner of Opera Europa/Camerata Nuova’s 2022 European Opera Directing Prize.
As assistant director, Victoria has worked with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Arena di Verona, Teatro Regio di Parma and Teatro Verdi di Salerno, and she was a fixed staff director at the Nationaltheater Mannheim. She was mentored by Katie Mitchell as part of the Women Opera Makers residency at the Festival Aix-en-Provence, as well as workshop residency programs at La Monnaie, Operosa Festival Belgrade and the Dutch National Opera.
Opernwelt described her staging of Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher, for the Staatsoper Hannover, as “bewilderingly strong”; other directing work includes for the Staatstheater Mainz (Verdi’s Otello), Theater und Orchester Heidelberg (The Monster in the Maze), Stuttgart’s Wilhelma Theater/HMDK Stuttgart (Die Fledermaus), Nationaltheater Mannheim (Il Trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno; Hänsel und Gretel; A Christmas Carol), the New Generation Festival (Le Nozze di Figaro).
She is a proponent of socially engaged theatre as a form of activism, epitomised in her staging of Jonathan Dove’s The Monster in the Maze for the Theater und Orchester Heidelberg, a participatory opera on the themes of war and migration. Her experience and instincts as an opera singer guide her collaborative work with other singing actors.