Harry Fehr
Director
Biography
British-born opera director Harry Fehr is recognised for his thoughtful and thought-provoking productions exploring a broad repertoire through clear story-telling.
Recent engagements include Die Zauberflöte and Madama Butterfly for Singapore Lyric Opera, The Elixir of Love for English National Opera plus The Cunning Little Vixen at the Royal Northern College of Music and Carmen at the Royal Academy of Music.
Fehr’s significant directorial successes have included a number of productions for Scottish Opera: Orlando, Il matrimonio segreto, La Cenerentola, Craig Armstrong’s The Lady from the Sea (winner of The Herald Angel Award 2012), Der fliegende Holländer and Ariodante. Amongst his other projects are Tosca for the Nederlandse Reisopera, Roberto Devereux for Badisches Staatstheater, Karlsruhe and Orlando for San Francisco Opera. Elsewhere he has directed Orlando for Welsh National Opera; Falstaff for Shanghai Opera House and L’elisir d’amore for Danish National Opera (Production of the Year in the CPHCulture.dk awards); Così fan tutte for Opera Holland Park; La finta giardiniera, I Capuleti e i Montecchi and La Sonnambula for Buxton International Festival.
Fehr has a long association with Blackheath Halls Opera working with professionals alongside participants from the local community. Together they have staged Cavalleria Rusticana, Eugene Onegin, L’elisir d’amore, Cendrillon, Count Ory, Noye’s Fludde, Semele and most recently Carmen.
Working with young artists Fehr has directed productions at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Royal College of Music, Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Trinity Laban Conservatoire and Clonter Opera where his Così fan tutte staging was nominated for a Manchester Theatre Award. His strong credentials as a Handel interpreter have led to invitations from the Hong Kong Academy of Performing Arts to stage Giulio Cesare and the Dutch National Opera Academy for Radamisto.
Harry Fehr studied philosophy at the University of Nottingham and was a member of the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden.
Harry Fehr is represented for General Management. For all enquiries please contact Caroline Phillips cphillips@caroline-phillips.co.uk
Reviews
Semele – Blackheath Halls Opera
BHO went ahead engaging the experienced Harry Fehr to direct a bright, vivid and, above all, witty contemporary realization …Fehr filled the stage with colour, and got memorable characterizations from this well-chosen cast… Fehr’s final pay-off the arrival of Bacchus distributing free mobile phones, rather than wine – was a stroke of genius, a feel-good factor with knobs on.
Opera, December 2023
Semele – Blackheath Halls Opera
…this, by any standards, was a great evening, really getting towards the core of Handel’s great oratorio-opera about the vanity of human hope, funny, sad, beautiful and deep. …well directed by Harry Fehr… This is such a labour of love, and it shines through everything they do – but it’s also serious quality. *****
Opera Now, September 2023
Bellini – La Sonnambula – Buxton International Festival
Charming and clever La Sonnambula, Buxton International Festival.
Harry Fehr’s production of Bellini’s La Sonnambula is here given full rein as a comedy …He succeeds where many fail, in taking a well-known opera, bringing something new, and making it work. The direction, using a valid concept with great care for the music, singing and libretto, triumphs.
***** Opera Scene, 20 July 2023
Bellini – La Sonnambula – Buxton International Festival
Bellini’s La Sonnambula is the high-spot of a four-show lyric theatre bill at the Buxton International Festival this year… back with Bellini, whose last showing at the festival was I Capuleti e i Montecchi in 2016, they’ve also returned to the director with a sure touch on that occasion – Harry Fehr – …Fehr makes excellent use of the BIF chorus, which is composed half of “Young Artists” to manage an effective muster of 20 –and are cleverly directed throughout.
The Arts Desk, 15 July 2023
Bellini – La Sonnambula – Buxton International Festival
Bellini’s half-serious, half-comic piece is delivered with style … [there are] many clever touches in Fehr’s production, which succeeds on every level. Fehr recognises the comic strand that runs throughout this story… Dramatically the result is profoundly moving and, at times, extremely funny.
***** The Stage, 8 July 2023
Vaughan Williams – Sir John In Love – British Youth Opera/Opera Holland Park
…and there was an exhilarating sweep to Harry Fehr’s production …it took full advantage of Opera Holland Park’s wide stage, also making judicious use of the catwalk in front of the orchestra…
Opera, November 2022
Vaughan Williams – Sir John In Love – British Youth Opera/Opera Holland Park
Fehr paces the busy first set effectively… and Fehr drolly and imaginatively exploits the musico-dramatic potentials offered… Moreover, Fehr makes terrific use of the front runway – the best I’ve seen this season at OHP – evoking movement and milieu.
Opera Today, 25 August 2022
Vaughan Williams – Sir John In Love – British Youth Opera/Opera Holland Park
…a focused and dynamic staging…
…a production that wishes to impress needs both pace, coherent direction of the many crowd scenes, and dynamic creative acting by the principals… Director Harry Fehr and conductor Marit Strindlund drive forward the action impressively…
Britishtheatre.com, 25 August 2022
Vaughan Williams – Sir John In Love – British Youth Opera/Opera Holland Park
Fehr’s production was engaging and effective … this production gave us a reminder of quite what a engagingly melodious and profoundly human piece it is. There was a lovely sense of warmth and humanity from the production.
Planet Hugill, 24 August 2022
Orlando – San Francisco Opera
In his canny and cohesive Orlando, the director Harry Fehr transported Handel’s 1733 work to a World War II British military hospital during the London Blitz. The concept harmonised with the libretto, loosely based on Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. By depicting the title character (mezzo Sasha Cooke) as an ambivalent soldier maddened by the defection of his lover to Medoro, a fellow wounded warrior (the compelling counter-tenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen) Fehr turned the roundelay romantic plot into a mediation on the confoundments and devastations of war – and love.
Opera, October 2019
