In the piece’s original production, which opened at the 1973 Aldeburgh Festival, the roles of Tadzio and his family were taken by ballet dancers choreographed by Frederick Ashton.

Fuchs takes a quite different approach, but one that works equally well. Here, members of the Cardiff-based ensemble NoFit State Circus portray the family, operating on a separate plane of existence from Aschenbach and the other singing characters.

Indeed, all the staging’s elements line up perfectly to articulate a complex overall vision.

The Stage (March 2024)

4*
Olivia Fuchs’ new production casts aerialists as the Polish family to stunning effect.

The Guardian (March 2024)

Death in Venice: a magnificent, startlingly original staging of Britten’s enigmatic opera
In this radical rethinking, WNO’s director Olivia Fuchs has turned Tadzio and his family into aerial acrobats who float above the scene.
5*

Welsh National Opera has added a startlingly original production of Britten’s enigmatic last opera of 1973, Death in Venice, based on the Thomas Mann novella which also inspired Visconti’s famous 1971 film.

What WNO’s director Olivia Fuchs has done, in a quite brilliant leap of the imagination, is to work with the Cardiff circus company NoFit State, and turn Tadzio and his family into aerial acrobats who float above the scene, increasing the distance that Aschenbach feels from the object of his desire. It is a measure of the greatness of this multi-layered opera – which has so many possible interpretations – that this radical rethinking, initially quite shocking, convinces so totally.

Telegraph (March 2024)

Death in Venice review — Britten’s swansong casts its glittering spell.
4*

But there are many other good things. The stage director Olivia Fuchs has made one radical decision. She uses circus acrobats (drawn from the Cardiff-based NoFit State company) — and in particular the astonishingly supple Antony César, who mimes Tadzio — not just to depict the Greek games that end Act I, but also to fill many other scenes and interludes with a dazzling array of tightrope routines, rope twirls and hoop swirls.

Times (March 2024)

Welsh National Opera stages Death in Venice for the first time... and it’s a triumph

Now, thanks to a single stroke of inspiration, Welsh National Opera's director Olivia Fuchs has solved the opera’s every problem. Her decision to replace Britten’s ensemble of dancers with a team of gymnastic aerialists from NoFit State has raised Tadzio and his Polish family onto a plane of reality that renders them unattainable – literally – to the earthbound old scholar who is obsessed with him. So near yet so far!

BachTrack (March 2024)

WNO’s bold and innovative Death in Venice explores its ambiguous depths (and heights)

Welsh National Opera’s short Spring season reached greater heights (both literally and metaphorically) with this remarkable interpretation of Benjamin Britten’s last and greatest opera. While highly imaginative it left space for (and required) its audience’s imagination. It was also emotionally effective and included some fine individual performances.

The most distinctive and exciting thing about this performance was that it was produced in collaboration with the Cardiff-based company NoFit State Circus and the stage was frequently peopled with acrobats, aerialists and rope walkers from the company. Their presence was far from being just a gimmick. Their presence and their spectacular activities extended that image of Carnivalesque Venice which is already there in the libretto, as in the Strolling Players in Act II. The rope walkers felt like an externalised image of von Aschenbach’s efforts to keep various elements of his mind and emotions in some sort of balance, to avoid a ‘fall’ as he tried to maintain his ‘balance’ while negotiating his way through his moral and aesthetic dilemmas, balancing his self-image with the pull of desire.

Death in Venice can seem too much like a philosophical discourse on aesthetics and ethics, on ideas about beauty and desire. It is all of that, but it is so much else as well – something more fully human, rich in emotion and excitement. For the ways in which it recognised all of this – its stunning use of the spectacular, its respectful, but not inhibited response to Myfanwy Piper’s excellent libretto and to the range of Britten’s music, and for its fluid stagecraft (in what can seem a rather fragmentary work) I was delighted by this production. In every respect, visual, intellectual, emotional and musical, it was just about everything a night in the opera house should be.

Seen and Heard (March 2024)

Olivia Fuchs’s new production in Cardiff for the Welsh National Opera brings Britten’s Death in Venice vividly to life.

This wonderful production is not to be missed as it tours from Cardiff to Llandudno, Southampton, Oxford, Bristol and Birmingham. Bravo for Olivia Fuchs and the Welsh National Opera.

The Article (March 2024)

5*

With its 17 rapidly changing scenes, large cast and virtuosic orchestra, the opera – its subject matter also famous from Visconti’s 1971 film – poses challenges in the theatre. Much was riding on Welsh National Opera’s first production of the work, directed by Olivia Fuchs, conducted by Leo Hussain, in a collaboration with the Cardiff-based NoFit State circus company. Collectively and individually, they have triumphed. At a time of crisis and scrutiny for UK opera, this stands as an exemplar.

Every problem has been solved, with first-class musical standards and a staging of bold imagination.

Fuchs’s coup is to replace the usual dancers, for the boy Tadzio and his family, with the acrobats of NoFit State. Their breathtaking, somersaulting routines, however compelling, never distract from Britten’s music.

The Observer (March 2024)

Welsh National Opera has sprung dazzlingly back to form with a new production of Benajmin Britten’s final opera, Death in Venice. It’s directed by Olivia Fuchs, in collaboration with the circus artists of NoFit State, and in a word, it’s masterful.
Fuchs’s Serenissima is a city of shadow, its landmarks glimpsed distantly in smudged, restless scraps of black and white film. The tourists and locals wear monochrome period dress; only Aschenbach (Mark Le Brocq) is in a noncommittal grey. The colour has drained from his world and from the peripheries of the stage he gazes, impotent, at the figures who dance and sport in the light, played by the acrobats and aerialists of NoFit State. It’s not just the muscular teenager Tadzio (the panther-like Antony Cesar) who lives on an elevated plane: the whole Polish family are figures of fantasy – frequently airborne and unashamedly, gracefully physical. There’s a lot of semi-nudity, and it’s not only the male form that gets fetishised....
It’s been suggested that Britten’s extended beach ballet sequence saps the momentum of the drama, and that seems unarguable. If performers this good and an imaginative vision this strong can’t prevent it from dragging, then nothing can. But that’s Britten’s fault, and he’s not around to authorise rewrites. In every other regard, this Death in Venice is strange, beautiful and troubling,

The Spectator (March 2024)

In her new production for Welsh National Opera of Benjamin Britten’s last opera, Olivia Fuchs certainly succeeded in creating a vibrant and vivid spectacle, apparently unfettered by the more usual view of this as an intimate piece.

In Fuchs’s production, designed by Nicola Turner, there was an actual tightrope, plus acrobatics, thanks to the decision to make the Polish family, whose son is the object of Aschenbach’s obsession, a troupe of circus performers, with the beautiful Tadzio an aerialist. That Antony César as Tadzio fulfilled the role with such grace and agility meant his plaudits were fully deserved. Frederick Ashton, who choreographed the premiere, would surely have experienced pangs of jealousy at how this extra spatial dimension so cleverly conveyed Tadzio’s unattainability for Aschenbach.

Opera (May 2024)

For the Welsh National Opera production, director Olivia Fuchs has further emphasised the distance between Aschenbach and his muse by using acrobats from the NoFit State Circus. This daring innovation is a stroke of genius; the highwire virtuosity and expressive floor routines blend seamlessly with all the other elements to create a satisfying whole.

Opera Today (March 2024)

Falstaff, Opera North review - going green and having fun
Verdi’s comic masterpiece with a retro feel of its own

In Olivia Fuchs’ production of Verdi’s final masterpiece, the story’s been transported to the 1980s, and the bourgeoisie of Windsor, who make up most of the roles in the story, are first witnessed meeting at their local tennis club.

She says this shows they’re aspirational but living unsustainably, while Falstaff, in near-squalor, is existing on his wits and having fun – a sort of ageing hippy, I suppose. That’s as may be: he does get through an awful lot of booze and food, as Shakespeare undeniably made him.

There’s something more to it than that, however. It’s quite unusual these days to see an opera production in which the scenes are separated by pauses, with a front curtain falling and a brief opportunity for the audience to cough and chat. We’ve been so used to single-set productions with fast transitions, we’ve almost forgotten how it used to be when re-sets had to be done by moving things off and on, unseen. It’s no doubt part of the philosophy of using found objects and stuff from previous shows, and it’s all silent and very efficient, but it reminds you of a more relaxed era in the theatre.

So does the way Fuchs has staged several of the comic scenes as they might have been in TV productions of an earlier, more innocent, era, with lots of dashing about and people bumping into each other – even a couple of comic policemen – the good-natured anarchy matching the Falstaffian view of life. “Life is a burst of laughter”, as the final choral fugue summarises the story (and the orchestral music so frequently tells us from the very beginning).

The Arts Desk (September 2023)

4* “Superbly realised”

Fuchs stages the piece with unerring skill, keeping a firm grip on narrative and character, and maintaining a lightness of touch that never descends into tomfoolery.

The Stage (October 2023)

4* "Opera North puts a twinkle in Sir John’s eye in gleeful – and green – staging"

The twinkle in this Falstaff’s eye, his endearing immunity to embarrassment, and above all an unfailing sense of humour suffuse the whole of Olivia Fuchs’s production, the first of three shows in the company’s sustainably staged “Green Season”.

Its carbon footprint might be small, but this Falstaff has a huge smile on its face.

The Guardian (October 2023)

Olivia Fuchs' lively production sweeps us along pell-mell

This is very much an ensemble piece, with conductor Garry Walker and director Olivia Fuchs sweeping us along pell-mell.

The Opera Critic (October 2023)

Falstaff review — this eco-friendly comedy sparkles

It may seem perverse for an opera review to start with a rave about the set, especially as Leslie Travers’s creation consists primarily of a clapped-out caravan and a lot of random bric-a-brac. With Colin Judson’s Bardolph and Dean Robinson’s Pistol dressed like dodgy 1980s market traders, you do wonder at first if you are watching Verdi’s Falstaff or an episode of Only Fools and Horses.

But a noble purpose lurks behind the tat. Olivia Fuchs’s staging is the first fruit of Opera North’s mission to be carbon neutral by 2030. Which means not only that this set is recycled completely from past sets or from “found” materials (Herne’s Oak in Act III is a beautiful assembly of deer antlers collected in the grounds of Harewood House), but that, jigged around, it will also serve for Opera North’s other two autumn productions.

All of which would be mere virtue signalling if the show were as dull as sludge. Happily it sparkles.

The Times (October 2023)

A joyous, green Falstaff opens Opera North's season

Olivia Fuchs' production of Falstaff is linked to the other two works in Opera North’s autumn calendar, Masque of Might and La rondine, in its adherence to guidance in the Theatre Green Book. Currently stocked sets, props and costumes will be recycled and carbon footprints will be minimal.

When Falstaff was lured into Alice Ford’s spacious room, where that laundry basket was placed in front of the double bed, the stage business directed by Olivia Fuchs soon became reminiscent of the legendary Whitehall farces...

Act 3 was a triumph. Conducted by Garry Walker, the orchestra, after becoming used to the exact comic timing, adjusted adroitly to the changes in Verdi’s score. This helped create the right atmosphere of a haunted woodland, though this one was not really spooky, but an Elizabethan masque where characters wore elaborate costumes and headdresses and where members of the Opera North Chorus could lurk in the shadows as fairy folk. The final fugue, which must have been tricky to rehearse, performed in and out of the front-stage hanging ribbons, left the audience full of joy.

BachTrack (October 2023)

Olivia Fuchs’ quicksilver production set in 1980’s Windsor matches the brilliance and comic timing of Verdi’s fast flowing conversational ensembles.

Unmissable.

Ilkley Gazette (October 2023)

Olivia Fuchs’s sparkling vernacular Falstaff

Hugh Canning's Operalogue (October 2023)

Director, Olivia Fuchs seized the opportunity to remind her audience of Monteverdi’s early years when his father, an apothecary in Cremona, would tell tales of life as an amateur surgeon. Fuchs’s imaginative interpretation of Monteverdi’s early work, composed soon after his move to Mantua, updated the then medical practices to the modern day.

Seen and Heard (July 2023)

Olivia Fuchs’s production is all the more effective for its simple presentation and concept (though not simplistic or facile), and for the cast’s unfussy gestures and movements.

Classical Source (July 2023)

It demands uniform excellence of acting from its eleven singers to draw you into the story and that’s exactly what director Olivia Fuchs gets from her cast... In a production that was almost uniformly excellent...

BachTrack (September 2022)

Placing it in the 1920s when the opera was written, and befitting a story whose heroine aspires to being the greatest operatic performer ever, Olivia Fuchs’ new production for Welsh National Opera has a suitably overblown and flamboyant air.

Guardian (September 2022)

the best thing I can say about Olivia Fuchs’s new production is that it takes account of all these issues, all these levels, and in the process convinces me, for one, that this is Janáček’s most powerful and innovative, if not greatest, stage work.

Whatever it’s about, Makropulos isn’t a work that suggests the wilder flights of directorial reworking: its context is too factual, and Fuchs rightly gives us a proper lawyer’s office (designer Nicola Turner), a proper theatre backstage, and a proper (or slightly improper) hotel bedroom, while leavening these realities with vague back-projected images of a shadowy past (by Sam Sharples), like the shadowy figures Marty begins to see in the present as her own presence recedes. Robbie Butler’s subtle lighting is an important factor here. Fuchs also gets right the balance between the prosaic and the fantastic, so that the scenes with Hauk and the faintly improbable love-making episodes, are drawn out of the main plot almost like divertissements in a baroque opera. This is a gripping affair in all its aspects.

The Arts Desk (September 2022)

In this new production of The Makropulos Affair for Welsh National Opera, director Olivia Fuchs has staged it in the time Janáček intended, after the First World War, when the newly founded state of Czechoslovakia was full of optimism and energy. The end of the war ushered in a 20- year period of democracy following the collapse of Habsburg rule. Prosperity continued until Hitler was handed the Sudetenland in 1938 and then occupied Prague the following year. There are parallels with what Russia has now done to Ukraine.

The opera’s staging works brilliantly well. In line with modern times Fuchs sees Emilia Marty, the latest incarnation of Elina Makropulos, as both victim and perpetrator. Bringing this compelling character to life is Spanish soprano Ángeles Blancas Gulin, who sang with passion and life- affirming energy.

The Article (September 2022)

Welsh National Opera’s The Makropulos Affair review — this is a triumph

★★★★★
Of all Janacek’s brilliant and quirky operas, The Makropulos Affair is surely the oddest — and perhaps the greatest — of them all. Who else could pull off a science-fiction mystery thriller about a tedious legal inheritance case? With its brilliant new production of this 1925 opera, Welsh National Opera (WNO) yet again proves itself to be the place to hear Janacek in the UK.

It would be easy for such an idiosyncratic piece to come a cropper. Director Olivia Fuchs navigates its complexities with a sure touch, aided by Nicola Turner’s 1920s sets with a surreal edge, Robbie Butler’s warm lighting and Sam Sharples’s subtle video. Details tell. Just one example: when the mysterious lead character, Emilia Marty, makes her first entrance into the fusty solicitor’s office, piles of paper spring into giant columns. Something strange is in the air

Times (September 2022)

The Makropulos Affair : an unmissable triumph for Welsh National Opera

the emotionally driven direction is by Olivia Fuchs…… The lesson of Fuchs’s production is clearly that we interfere with the course of nature, the rhythm of life and death, at our peril: in her final desperate moments, her head shaven, the accumulated tragedy of the many lives Emilia has led is overwhelming.

Telegraph (September 2022)

Welsh National Opera’s The Makropulos Affair: a magnificent achievement

Olivia Fuchs’ powerful new production

Opera Today (September 2022)

...Olivia Fuchs’s staging, imaginatively designed by takis, is sensitive to all the libretto’s weird mystical implications without being pretentiously tricksy.

The Telegraph (July 2019)

Over to the world of heightened emotions, then, in Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta. Blindness and isolation are underlined in Olivia Fuchs’ fine production, with its neon-light maze (even the forest is made of light), its use of torches as flowers and blindfolded nursemaids. We suspend disbelief entering into this legend-like realm…

Seen and Heard International (July 2019)

OHP has mounted it before, in 2008, and now there is Olivia Fuchs’s production and takis’s modernist, abstract designs cover all the bases of darkness, light and awakening perfectly well. Fuchs makes it clear that blind Iolanta is the ultimate Daddy’s girl, literally kept in the dark in a remote castle by her father King René, who commands that his daughter must never know she is blind. As with Snow White or the Sleeping Beauty, love is the key to her release. This is high, gothic romance that trembles with Freudian ambiguities and significances, and Fuchs’s detailed direction gets under the opera’s skin...

Classical Source (July 2019)

Olivia Fuchs transposes the play’s and indeed the opera’s world so that the action all takes place in or around a hospital ward; but despite the familiarity of the approach, it is done with directness, passion and commitment.

New Statesman (August 2019)

Add unfussy, stylised direction from Olivia Fuchs and the singing simply took wing. And not just Romaniw and Butt Philip (though they were magnificent), or Mikhail Svetlov’s noble, conflicted King René. Even the chorus soared. I walked out feeling simultaneously harrowed and elated. Damn it all, OHP, why do you have to be so good?

The Spectator (August 2019)

... Olivia Fuchs’s witty and glamorous production referenced today’s celebrity culture.

Opera Magazine (January 2019)

What impressed most‚ though‚ was the detailed characterisations that Fuchs drew from her young singers. She sets up the different characters’ relationships over the music of the overture‚ including what looks like Semele‚ Jupiter and Juno in the configuration of the ‘distracted boyfriend’ social-media meme of a year or so ago.

BachTrack (November 2018)

Fuchs and Thavoris have mixed some surreally up-to-date imagery with the 17th century settings (including a Cadillac-style vehicle for Cinders to get to the ball – first presented as a model car and then evoked‚ on the fall of the curtain‚ by a silhouette and light show)...
Working with student performers is always a matter of harnessing their limitless enthusiasm while guarding against the pitfalls of their relative inexperience‚ and in this aspect Olivia Fuchs has triumphed.

Arts Desk (December 2017)

The creative team of Olivia Fuchs (director)‚ Yannis Thavoris (set and costume designer)‚ Matt Haskins (lighting designer) and Bethan Rhys William (choreographer) brought a touch and a tone so perfect to an overpowering performance.

Northern Soul (December 2017)

Swiftly flowing and straightforward the production was a strong one bringing the story to life which came as no surprise given the wide experience of director Olivia Fuchs...Royally entertained by Olivia Fuchs’ Cendrillon the delighted Manchester audience supplied long and enthusiastic applause.

Seen & Heard International (December 2017)

This version of Cinderella‚ directed by Olivia Fuchs is great fun and a classy choice of entertainment for the Christmas month.

Weekend Notes (December 2017)

With Marcus Farnsworth on the forestage from the outset in a long white nightshirt‚ huddled on a chair beside a shrouded object‚ the audience was immersed for eighty minutes of mesmeric music‚ subtly directed by Olivia Fuchs with‚ from the Saunders piece onwards‚ Sian Edwards conducting.

Classical Source (September 2017)

It’s hard to imagine that Peter Maxwell Davies’ dramatic monologue‚ Eight Songs for a Mad King‚ can bear‚ or needs‚ any further contextualisation or intensification‚ so traumatic is its depiction - part public history‚ part private drama - of the descent into madness of King George III. It is a painful exposure of the fracture which separates the Sovereign King from the human mortal. Full credit‚ then‚ to director Olivia Fuchs‚ conductor Sian Edwards and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group for this imaginative‚ thoughtfully programmed and highly engaging contextualisation of the work - one which gave us not only eight songs for a mad King‚ but also the songs of the deluded monarch: the music that rings and rages through his mind‚ heart and soul; real or imagined.

Opera Today (September 2017)

Olivia Fuchs’s 2009 production‚ revived for the first time at Opera Holland Park last night‚ is straightforward‚ to the point and intelligent in its use of the space.

BachTrack (July 2017)

Olivia Fuchs’s production of Janácek’s unflinching portrait of poor Katya Kabanova‚ crushed by her husband Tichon and her awful mother-in-law‚ the Kabanicha‚ and then destroyed by guilt when she finds love elsewhere‚ has not been seen here since 2009‚ but this first revival proves it to be one of Opera Holland Park’s most potent offerings.

Classical Source (July 2017)

This revival of Olivia Fuchs’ 2009 production of Kát’a Kabanová for Opera Holland Park proves extremely effective as it makes good use of the space and the natural light that floods into it. The result is a staging that introduces just enough sense of exaggeration and stylisation to emphasise the repressive nature of the society‚ and yet also retains sufficient realism to make us feel for the protagonists as flesh and blood human beings.

MusicOMH (July 2017)

Creating the right sense of small-town claustrophobia in Opera Holland Park’s wide open spaces is quite tricky. Fuchs and Thavoris solved this by covering the stage with azure blue colour for the Volga River‚ and confining the characters to wooden walkways crossing the water. There were just two acting areas‚ a bed of reeds with a seat stage left‚ and a circular platform stage right. This latter formed the Kabanova’s house in the first half‚ surrounded by a movable mesh half-screen which again brought a feeling of claustrophobia. And within these spaces‚ Fuchs regularly had the chorus spilling across‚ peering‚ prying‚ spying and generally intimidating. In one magical moment‚ during Boris and Kat’a’s Act Two duet Boris (Peter Hoare) walks off the walkway into the ’water’‚ and eventually Kat’a (Julia Sporsen) joins him. This sense of escaping via water created a powerful resonance through the remainder of the opera.

Planet Hugill (July 2017)

This staging‚ a revival of Olivia Fuchs’s 2009 production‚ does the work full justice‚ a straightforward account that doesn’t overcomplicate the clear-cut narrative and morality.

The Arts Desk (July 2017)

Olivia Fuchs’s 2009 production makes a welcome return...

The Express (July 2017)

Olivia Fuch’s staging of Der Rosenkavalier for WNO was a co-production with Theater Magdeburg‚ who first performed it three years ago. The year of the composer’s death - 1949 - was projected onto a gauze at the outset‚ highlighting Fuch’s principle device‚ namely the introduction of the Marschallin’s often anguished contemplation of the passing of time. Fuch’s weighting of this element‚ together with the philosophizing on the nature of love‚ was a welcome corrective to the frivolous and farcical element in the opera.

Opera Magazine (August 2017)

Fuchs’ sensitive crafting of the sentiment of this opening Act is utterly convincing‚ and it is aided by the characterisation of the central lovers.

Opera Today (July 2017)

In Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier‚ the mix of farce and deeply philosophical musing on the nature of ageing requires an approach that is neither ludicrous nor reverential. Olivia Fuchs’s staging for Welsh National Opera – following a co-production with Theater Magdeburg that premiered there three years ago – strikes a good balance. Fuchs certainly gives a more serious context to the Marschallin’s rumination on time passing by adding the figure of the old Marschallin‚ a ghostly persona revisiting her own story of 38 years before.

The Guardian (June 2017)

The test for director and designer is to find novelty without tiresome exertion. Olivia Fuchs and Niki Turner (with lighting by Ian Jones) have achieved that‚ some reservations aside‚ in a compelling new staging for Welsh National Opera.

The Observer (June 2017)

Not least is the sense of dislocated time which‚ in director Olivia Fuchs’ fin de siecle new production for Welsh National Opera‚ revolves around the Marschallin’s poignant response to growing older.

The Stage (June 2017)

Fuchs devises a clever payoff at the end that is possibly even more touching than Hofmannsthal and Strauss’s closing scene...Fuchs may have no startling revelations about this oft-performed opera‚ but she catches the balance between humour and pathos well.

The Sunday Times (June 2017)

Olivia Fuchs’s staging – set in the early 20th century‚ as is now customary – has no problem rendering the first level in refreshingly simple style‚ allowing the plot to unfold with unexaggerated humour and failing only to indicate the crucial distinction between the Marschallin’s established wealth and the newly acquired millions being splashed around by the arriviste Faninals.

The Telegraph (June 2017)

In Olivia Fuchs’s mixed new Der Rosenkavalier‚ her first production for Welsh National Opera‚ she draws out one of its bittersweet themes — the passing of time. Sometimes the effect of making this metaphor visible was magical‚ sometimes I felt she was underlining Strauss’s score and Hofmannsthal’s libretto with marker pen.

The Times (June 2017)

Olivia Fuchs’s production conspicuously avoids the potential dangers of a dramatic presentation in the round – that is‚ having the whole stage exposed without recourse to side wings or a backstage to facilitate scene changes‚ and subjecting the characters to close scrutiny by the audience. The staging is simple but effective...

Classical Source (October 2016)

But Fuchs got some remarkably detailed performances from her young cast and the ensemble really did create some theatrical magic.
This was a lively production‚ full of action; Fuchs is certainly not a director to expect her performers to simply stand and sing. But unlike a number of Handel productions I have seen‚ there was never a sense of the action being used to keep the interest up‚ it always came out of character and illuminated the emotional undercurrent.

Planet Hugill (October 2016)

I can say without any hesitation‚ still less exaggeration‚ that this is the best staging and performance of a Handel opera I have seen. Olivia Fuchs’s production takes us to AMNESIA‚ an S&M club with mind-altering substances – and activities – ready to hand‚ to foot‚ and indeed to any other part of the body so inclined or so compelled.

Seen & Heard International (October 2016)

Olivia Fuchs’s production fully faced up to the plot’s unpleasantness‚ emphasizing poor Iris’s vulnerability and innocence without fetishizing or aestheticizing it‚ underlining the cynical heartlessness of the opera’s male characters and the brutality of the world it engenders.

Opera Magazine (August 2016)

Fuchs explores its dichotomies clear-mindedly and without sensationalism in a staging‚ her finest of recent years‚ that is at its most unbearable when it is most restrained.

The Guardian (June 2016)

Fuchs’ production moved fluidly between the abstract and the concrete...The great virtue of Olivia Fuchs’ production was that it did not try to make the piece into something it wasn’t‚ she embraced the work fully and with Anne Sophie Duprels created a remarkable account of the title role.

Planet Hugill (June 2016)

One can imagine disastrous productions of the piece‚ but there’s a bravery and integrity to Olivia Fuchs’s staging that makes the evening utterly compelling‚ however gut-wrenching it may be along the way.

The Stage (June 2016)

In Scottish Opera’s new production of James MacMillan’s 20-year-old opera‚ directed by Olivia Fuchs‚ there is no flinching from the horror of the events as they unfold

The Opera Critic (February 2015)

Olivia Fuchs’s new production for Scottish Opera‚ updating this (basically true) medieval horror-yarn to a 20th-century military dictatorship in Kai Fischer’s suggestive scaffold set‚ adds amusing extra touches: the execution of the eponymous heroine in an electric chair‚ for instance

The Times (February 2015)

Shocking and unmissable...Director Olivia Fuchs has moved the action to a highly repressed regime in the 1970s‚ possibly Pinochet’s Chile‚ so Kai Fischer’s sets are crumbling concrete lattice‚ dust and votive candles illuminating pictures‚ presumably of the disappeared...With its unrelenting assault on the senses Inés de Castro is not a comfortable evening. It is not supposed to be. Scottish Opera‚ with its welcome bold new foyer development‚ is firing on all cylinders in this powerful and unmissable production‚ the big disappointment being that there are only a total of four performances

BachTrack (January 2015)

This harrowing story of sexual violence and torture is an uncomfortable watch‚ but Scottish Opera’s new production of James MacMillan’s first opera features terrific music and a strong cast...Olivia Fuch’s production is good. Updated to the 20th century – take your pick of brutal regimes; Pinochet’s Chile is suggested in the programme book – it tells the story straight using stark sets and bold lighting

The Guardian (January 2015)

But ultimately it may be most significant that there is a woman‚ Olivia Fuchs‚ in charge of this production. Because what the director has appreciated is that this national tale is ultimately about the dynamic between the two women‚ Prince Pedro’s Spanish mistress (Stephanie Corley) and his wife Blanca (Susannah Glanville)‚ in a way that Madame Butterfly (for example) is not. Both roles are beautifully sung and also impeccably acted‚ in a cast that has no weak links...This Ines de Castro is essential‚ and a work in which Scottish Opera can take real pride

Herald Scotland (January 2015)

Olivia Fuchs’s production‚ in 1970s Chilean dictatorship style‚ all ash and concrete‚ was as minimal as McVicar’s was extravagant. By the end all the key characters are dead‚ the prince has gone mad and the exhumed skeleton of Inés is crowned queen‚ looking like a carnival monkey

Observer on Sunday (January 2015)

Olivia Fuchs’s intelligent staging‚ strikingly well designed by Kai Fischer‚ substitutes a vaguely mid 20th-century Fascistic setting for the medieval original. Although there is no attempt to sugar the pill or minimise the melodrama‚ it keeps things the right side of camp ghoulishness

The Telegraph (January 2015)

Inés de Castro is intense‚ raw and packed with action...an emotional rollercoaster with an explosive finale. There’s only one word for this show and that’s Wow. This is opera in the raw...intense and utterly in your face. An emotional rollercoaster which grabs you by the throat‚ keeps hold and doesn’t let go...you can almost feel the tension crackling...an explosive showdown and one that will live in the memory for a long time

The Daily Record (January 2015)

...intense direction by Olivia Fuchs...Triumphant and bloody new production of James MacMillan’s first opera

The Stage (January 2015)

Olivia Fuch’s staging combined uncomfortable reminders of modern ethnic cleansing in the Bosnian War with a strong element of religious suppression...Fuch’s staging‚ though with its backdrop of military brutality‚ did have the effect of stripping the action back to the basic love triangle of Norma‚ Adalgisa and their feckless enemy Pollione‚ and most of Fuch’s intelligent direction had a plausibility often dissipated by a traditional performance

Opera Magazine (September 2014)

(Olivia) Fuchs gets excellent acting performances...This production excels orchestrally‚ is well acted throughout and has fine vocal performances from its two female leads. All this makes it well worth seeing

BachTrack (July 2014)

All credit then to Opera Holland Park for championing Norma a second time. Director Olivia Fuchs finds a satisfyingly contemporary resonance by setting it a recognisably modern occupation – desert combat soldiers representing Rome‚ marshalling the subdued Gauls into and out of a barbed-wire topped fenced enclosure‚ in which rises the stunted trunk of the sacred oak of Irminsul‚ the spiritual symbol of the oppressed masses. The action during Bellini’s spirited Overture could not be more chilling: soldiers taunting the women folk‚ leading to three brutal sexual assaults. This is opera that wants to tell it how it is...it was great to hear the score presented with such detailed musical preparation and cohesive staging. The Chorus – in its singing and action – was committed and believable

Classical Source (July 2014)

...the scene in which Adalgisa confesses her love for a Roman is stunning‚ thanks to the singing and some intelligent direction

MusicOMH (July 2014)

Overall‚ this was a thoroughly enjoyable and highly imaginative production – much more daring and interesting than some of the rather safe productions which have been emerging from other UK top opera venues

Seen & Heard International (July 2014)

The mystique around Bellini’s Norma evokes antique marmoreal grandeur‚ and a title-role so vocally and histrionically demanding that in living memory only Maria Callas on a good night has mastered it.
But Opera Holland Park’s production commendably refuses to be awed by this penumbra. Grabbing the thing with two hands‚ the director Olivia Fuchs strips it of grand opera flummery - Druidic processions‚ Ancient Gauls‚ trogdolyte priestesses - and treats it as a raw music drama focused on the relationship between a strong woman and a weak two-timing man‚ trapped in a modern war zone...Rarely have I seen a staging of this opera which conveys the principal characters’ conflicted emotions so vividly‚ making Norma’s final reconciliation with the man who has destroyed her unusually plausible… Fuchs excavates the situation’s psychological essence to a depth that a more “authentic” staging in Monty Pythonish beards and hierophantic robes could never hope to reach

Telegraph (July 2014)

The production is a high point of the OHP season

The Oxford Times (July 2014)

Regisseurin Olivia Fuchs hat mit bemerkenswertem Feingefühl die Umbruchsituation im Schaffen des Komponisten mit dem Ängsten zur Vergänglichkeit von Jugend und Liebe sowie dem Triumph der Jugendliebe durc Sophie und Octavian verknüpft. Ist es in der eigentlichen fassung ein verlorenes Taschentuch als Symbol des Verlustes und der Vergänglichkeit ‚ so ist es in ihrer Inszenierung eine alte Frau‚ die die Klammer der inhaltlichen Botschaft bildet. Die Zeit hat kein Maß außer der Vergänglichkeit /// Director Olivia Fuchs linked with remarkable sensitivity the transition and upheaval in the work of the composer with the fear of losing youth and love as well as the triumph of young love through Sophie and Octavian. In the original version the lost handkerchief is the symbol of loss and transience‚ however in her production it is an old lady who portrays the content of the message at the beginning and the end. Time is nothing but transience

Magdeburg Volksstimme‚ Kultur (February 2014)

Olivia Fuchs... Sie versteht das Stück also gewis¬sermaßen als Glückssuche im Einst auf den Trümmern des Jetzt. Und sie hat sich eines schönen Regie-Einfalls bedient: Sie zeigt diese Wiener Gesellschafts- Farce als Rückblick der alten Marschallin auf ihre Jugend. Es gibt also neben der singenden Marschallin immer auch ihr stummes Alter Ego ...Eine Marschallin ohne Worte‚ die aber mit kleinsten Gesten und subtiler Mimik ausdrücken ... Regisseurin Olivia Fuchs hat diese Marschallinnenaufspaltung glänzend inszeniert...gerät am Ende durch den Zahn der Zeit‚ wie durch die Ereig-nisse der Geschichte sichtbar aus den Fugen. Ein einleuchtendes Inszenierungskonzept‚ das Olivia Fuchs mit genauer Personenführung‚ mit gutem Timing und netten Einfällen umsetzt‚ auch mit gewagter Deutlichkeit‚ was die Bettszenen und alles Erotische angeht‚ wo sie nicht gerade zimperlich ist. Sie macht das mit großer Professionalität‚ mit diskreter‚ Komö¬diantik‚ ohne alles Chargieren und mit viel Geschmack...Eine sehr charmane‚ logische‚ schöne Inszenierung‚ die das Stück ernst nimmt. Die Aufführung ist wirklich sehr berührend‚ vom ersten bis zum letzten Takt....so subtil und fein wie die ganze Inszenierung

MDR Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (February 2014)

Olivia Fuchs...sees the piece as a search for the happiness of the past in the ruins of the present. And she used a beautiful production idea: she shows this Viennese society farce as the old Marschallin’s reminiscence of her youth. On stage with the singing Marschallin there is always her mute aged alter-ego...a wordless Marschallin who can express more with a tiny gesture and subtle facial expression...Director Olivia Fuchs staged this splitting up of the Marschallin figure splendidly...By the end‚ the space has visibly fallen apart as if ravaged by the cogs of time as well as the events of the story. It is an enlightened concept that Olivia Fuchs transposes to the stage with detailed character portrayals‚ with good timing and nice ideas as well as with a bold clarity regarding the bed scenes and everything erotic where she is not exactly squeamish. She does that with great professionalism‚ with discrete comedy without any overacting and with great taste...It is a very charming‚ logical‚ beautiful production that takes the piece seriously. The performance is very moving‚ from the first to the last bar...subtle and delicate as the whole production

MDR Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (February 2014)

Die Frivolität der Liebesnacht einer verheirateten Fürstin in den Dreißigern mit ihrem 17-jährigen Cousin und die Melancholie einer Philosophie der Zeit; die Überreichung der Silberrose und die wie ein Blitz einschlagende Liebe auf den ersten Blick zwischen Octavian und Sophie; deren Übergang in die Kollision von altem Land- und reichem Neuadel im Hause Faninal; schließlich die Verkleidungsmaskerade im Wirtshaus‚ bei der der Ochs am Ende zwar alt aussieht‚ aber doch auch Noblesse beweist‚ als er das Spiel durchschaut: Das ist in der Inszenierung von Olivia Fuchs alles als präzises Zusammenspiel aus der Musik entwickelt...die britisch-deutsche Regisseurin und ihre Ausstatterin Niki Turner stets das rechte Maß wahren‚ Geschmack haben‚ Eleganz zelebrieren‚ die Komödie deftig werden‚ aber nie zum Klamauk umkippen lassen /// The frivolity of the night of love of a married princess in her thirties with her 17 year old cousin and the melancholy philosophy of time; the presentation of the silver rose and love at first sight between Octavian and Sophie which strikes like lightning; the transition and collision of old aristocracy and new money in the house Faninal; finally the costume farce at the inn‚ where the Ochs at the end is made to look old‚ but also proves his nobility‚ as he realizes the deception: Olivia Fuchs has developed all of this in her staging with great detail and in precise interplay with the music...the British-German director and her designer Niki Turner always maintain the right balance. They have taste‚ celebrate elegance‚ allow the comedy to be earthy‚ but never let it descend into slapstick

Thüringische Landeszeitung (February 2014)

The day after the world’s scientists announced their latest findings on climate change proved perfect timing for Olivia Fuchs’s eco-warrior Noye’s Fludde‚ presented as a free promenade event in the South Bank Centre’s Clore Ballroom....This is a great community enterprise‚ just the way Britten intended

What’s On Stage (September 2013)

I arrived a few hours early for Peter Grimes to catch a taste of the atmosphere at the festival‚ and was blown away by the spectacularly high quality of Noye’s Fludde‚ an LPO production featuring beneficiaries of the orchestra’s various education schemes‚ from young schoolchildren all the way up to the young professionals of Foyles Future Firsts. A packed audience on the Clore Ballroom floor were treated to the most professional children’s show I’ve ever seen. This piece and Peter Grimes combined show the impressive scope of Britten’s achievements – if they can all be executed as well as they were here‚ then the more weekends dedicated to him‚ the better

BachTrack (October 2013)

...LPO players joined scores of children in Olivia Fuchs’s climate-change savvy promenade performance of Britten’s Noyes Fludde

The Times (October 2013)

...a production of this opera today that does not amplify its Freudian overtones but treats it as a children’s fairy tale...Fuchs is to be congratulated for avoiding the obvious contemporary references...it was refreshing that she eschewed the psychoanalytical touches that have been a feature of several other recent UK stagings

Opera Magazine (September 2013)

... the final chorus in this year’s third and last production‚ the Hänsel und Gretel of director Olivia Fuchs‚ was simply wonderful – a life-affirming opera moment as children and adults materialised alike in a sudden tableau that‚ as it should do‚ represents real celebration. The audience left on a high

Musical Criticism (July 2013)

Garsington’s outstanding and insightful production‚ directed by Olivia Fuchs‚ proves that Hänsel und Gretel is much more than a fairy-tale – it is a universal story of the transitions we undergo from innocence to experience

BachTrack (June 2013)

Director Olivia Fuchs and designer Niki Turner came up trumps in their approach to this piece which so often provokes unfortunate excesses. Once again Garsington have a creative team which uses the constraints of the space to real advantage‚ as they successfully carried us into the world of the Brothers Grimm

Brian Dickie.com (June 2013)

Olivia Fuchs’s new staging of Humperdinck’s hardy perennial and summer-opera-festival favourite‚ has nothing about greed‚ abandonment or abuse that isn’t already embedded in the work itself. Yet it has an edge that keeps it from being sucked into a folk-tale comfort zone...It was very much in the spirit of ‘once-upon-a-time’ – like the leather-bound volume that magically opens to set the ball rolling in a Disney cartoon – but this is quickly subverted by the five white-faced angels dressed in black who are present throughout...Fuchs has honoured the familiar power of fable and a child’s view of the world‚ realised with brilliant‚ cartoon-like precision by Turner’s designs that directly evoke want or plenty

Classical Source (June 2013)

The contribution of the Old Palace School and Trinity Boys Choirs was completely inspired. Frenzied storyboard freeze-frames that transform the set add excitement and intrigue‚ and as the captives are freed at the end the show becomes truly triumphant. Olivia Fuchs has delivered a classic children’s folk story set to beautiful music that literally leaps straight from the pages. Thrilling and enchanting‚ as a show it is exceptional‚ as an experience‚ unforgettable. Garsington Opera is the sublime and the ridiculous‚ and what an underrated combination that is

Daily Info (June 2013)

...director Olivia Fuchs’s clear-sighted production of Humperdinck’s 1893 opera suggests that love and fellowship are key...All the time providing magic‚ comedy and charm‚ Fuchs never lets these performances trip into slick sentimentality...like the production as a whole‚ this is a fairytale with a pragmatic heart‚ where real magic is found in compassion

Entartetemusik (June 2013)

Olivia Fuchs’s resourceful production

The Guardian (June 2013)

It’s rare to find a production in which the direction‚ sets‚ costumes and lighting work together so intimately to achieve so rounded a final work

MusicOMH (June 2013)

Humperdinck’s deft blend of sophistication and grandeur ensures there is plenty for both connoisseurs and newcomers to appreciate. That is especially true in this engaging new Garsington production by Olivia Fuchs‚ designed by Niki Turner. The tone is just right‚ Fuchs maintaining a sense of childlike wonder as well as presenting some neat touches of her own. Reflecting the story’s origins‚ the action takes place mainly on a vast book of Grimms’ Fairy Tales...an overwhelmingly joyous experience

The Stage (June 2013)

...this engaging new Garsington production by Olivia Fuchs‚ designed by Niki Turner. The tone is just right‚ Fuchs maintaining a sense of childlike wonder as well as presenting some neat touches of her own. Reflecting the story’s origins‚ the action takes place mainly on a vast book of Grimms’ Fairy Tales

The Stage (June 2013)

The woods at the Getty Estate surrounding Garsington’s theatre have never been scarier. First the rain and wind came down exactly when Hansel and Gretel got lost in the forest. Second‚ Olivia Fuchs’s new staging of Humperdinck’s opera features a gang of terrifying extras in black suits and bowler hats...Her central idea is powerful: Hansel and Gretel’s adventure is a rite of passage in which the siblings have to write their own narrative

The Times (June 2013)

The world conjured by music and words is that of the psyche – its way of playing tricks on our emotions‚ relationships and sense of reality... Olivia Fuchs’ deceptively simple staging‚ designed by Niki Turner with video by Jon Driscoll‚ was first mounted eight years ago for the Royal Opera’s Linbury Studio. It still looks fresh – partly because it scales up well in a bigger theatre‚ and partly because its benign veneer suits a young cast. Modern interpreters like to stress the opera’s murky underbelly of manipulation and abuse. Fuchs gives it a more light-hearted‚ though never superficial‚ quality. Forest and fairy world become a playground for the impulses of love‚ frailty and jealousy – as if the audience is having a mirror held up to itself‚ revealing how we humans make such fools of ourselves... the Britten centenary is off to a flying start

Financial Times (January 2013)

The decision to restage Olivier Fuch’s Royal Opera studio production of Benjamin Britten’s opera in the composer’s centenary year for the annual collaboration between the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Scottish Opera was a superb one. Fuch’s staging‚ crisp and modern in a modular‚ neon and sharply-dressed way‚ and brilliantly eloquent‚ gives an ideal platform for the young singers

Herald Scotland (January 2013)

Olivia Fuchs’s smart‚ simple staging...the action moved swiftly‚ one scene moving effortlessly into the next...

Opera Magazine (August 2012)

Dark‚ scudding clouds and soughing winds added a chilly‚ Scottish zest to Olivia Fuchs’s admirably straightforward production...The Act Two sextet finale‚ in particular‚ burrowed deep into the opera’s romantic psyche...Highly recommended

Classical Source (June 2012)

...in Olivia Fuchs’s austere production for Opera Holland Park‚ the agony of Lucia’s lover‚ Edgardo‚ is as poignant as that of the bloodstained bride...an elegant and understated staging

Independent on Sunday (June 2012)

In truth‚ the threatening elements provided a rather fitting backdrop for Sir Walter Scott’s dark tale of bloody patriarchal oppression. Olivia Fuchs’s production‚ with Jamie Vartan’s economical designs‚ neatly points up the insidious social forces that conspire to rob Lucia of her happiness and sanity

London Evening Standard (June 2012)

...the opener to OHP’s 2012 season could hardly come more highly recommended

MusicOMH (June 2012)

The 2012 season of Opera Holland Park is off to a splendid start with Olivia Fuchs’s unfussy new production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor

Oxford Times (June 2012)

Informal and affordable Opera Holland Park opens its festive summer event with Olivia Fuchs’s new production of Donizetti’s double tragedy. It’s among her best work‚ incisive as narrative‚ perceptive in characterisation...a thrilling evening

The Stage (June 2012)

...the well-drilled chorus in her highly satisfying Saul at Buxton Festival

Oxford Times (July 2011)

Handel’s masterly oratorio Saul emerged more cogently in Olivia Fuchs’ inventive but ungimmicky staging‚ updated to post-war Washington DC

The Telegraph (July 2011)

The temporary nature of the auditorium‚ flung up for the summer months only‚ may look a little ramshackle‚ but it is comfortable and well-equipped for the various tricks demanded by Olivia Fuchs’ imaginative staging

Express (June 2011)

This new production by Olivia Fuchs‚ updated to an eclectic modernity which embraces leather and chains and a yogic ashram‚ worked hard to offer a fresh interpretion

Observer on Sunday (June 2011)

Olivia Fuchs’ Magic Flute is equally bold in concept‚ brilliantly conceived in visual terms

The Stage (June 2011)

Opera Holland Park continues its 2010 season with a revival of Olivia Fuchs’s 2003 production of Beethoven’s “Fidelio”. It remains strong. The contemporary setting with the prisoners in orange jumpsuits reflecting the clothing of images of the inmates of Guantanamo Bay is still a potent one‚ and the evident brutalising and brutalism of both the prisoners and their prison-wardens makes the intended impression

Classical Source (July 2010)

Olivia Fuchs’s production of Fidelio earned plaudits upon its first outing in 2003; though I did not see it then‚ it remains just as relevant and disturbing today. Guantánamo Bay references‚ brought out both in the stage direction and in Jamie Vartan’s excellent designs‚ need to be hammered home just as much as they did then. The United States may have a new administration and this country may have a new government‚ but the camp of infamy remains open for business and the war criminals who led us into Afghanistan and Iraq have never been tried. Even if some resolution had been reached‚ one would not need to look far to find equally urgent cases: Burma‚ Gaza‚ Tibet‚ let alone the domestic prisons of our own countries‚ cynically packed with unfortunate souls who have no reason to be there‚ solely in order to keep the likes of the Daily Mail happy – though when are such organs of poujadisme ever satisfied? This production’s revelation of the prisoners in their orange jumpsuits is shocking enough‚ but the way in which they are cowed‚ in need of the light yet almost unable to cope with it‚ is something to shame not only those who will never see it but those who have voted for or at least tacitly assented to such barbarism‚ even those of us who abhor it and yet have been unsuccessful in bringing it to an end.

Musicweb International (July 2010)

It is‚ of course‚ tiresome to have to confront those who reckon Fidelio a failure; they so spectacularly miss the point that this is a work about freedom‚ and not in any sense that our political overlords would understand. Yet a production such as this might actually accomplish that confrontation for us. Fuchs’s reappraisal of Jacquino transforms a bit part into something truly horrifying: doubtless not an evil person‚ but a stupid one‚ brutalised by the situation‚ who engages in relatively ‘low-level’ abuse‚ or so the politicians would see it‚ of the prisoners. In another setting‚ he would doubtless be chanting ‘harmless’ nationalist slogans at a soccer match. And why should we trust the minister‚ who arrives with sinister bodyguards in shades? Likewise‚ the ‘media’‚ desperate to be let in to snap the first photographs? This souring of the final victory may not have been what Beethoven intended‚ but it works‚ and there is no harm in undercutting the music just a little‚ when it is done so well. It need not be done so every time‚ but is a valid option when confronted with an age of barbarism beyond anything the composer could have imagined.

Musicweb International (July 2010)

'Fuchs’ Pelléas is both highly poetic and oddly provocative'

Independent on Sunday (June 2010)

Olivia Fuchs’s production of Fidelio earned plaudits upon its first outing in 2003; though I did not see it then‚ it remains just as relevant and disturbing today. Guantánamo Bay references‚ brought out both in the stage direction and in Jamie Vartan’s excellent designs‚ need to be hammered home just as much as they did then. The United States may have a new administration and this country may have a new government‚ but the camp of infamy remains open for business and the war criminals who led us into Afghanistan and Iraq have never been tried. Even if some resolution had been reached‚ one would not need to look far to find equally urgent cases: Burma‚ Gaza‚ Tibet‚ let alone the domestic prisons of our own countries‚ cynically packed with unfortunate souls who have no reason to be there‚ solely in order to keep the likes of the Daily Mail happy – though when are such organs of poujadisme ever satisfied? This production’s revelation of the prisoners in their orange jumpsuits is shocking enough‚ but the way in which they are cowed‚ in need of the light yet almost unable to cope with it‚ is something to shame not only those who will never see it but those who have voted for or at least tacitly assented to such barbarism‚ even those of us who abhor it and yet have been unsuccessful in bringing it to an end.

Musicweb International (July 2010)

'Olivia Fuchs’s haunting new staging of Pelléas is the better bet. To start with‚ the City of London Sinfonia sound transformed under Brad Cohen’s baton: Debussy’s pellucid score flickers with shimmer‚ seduction and‚ at times‚ dangerous menace. It grounds what can be a wispy psychodrama in a very human context — just as Fuchs’s probing production is zeroing in on the story’s universalities. A Buddhist herself‚ perhaps it’s no surprise to find Fuchs keying into the opera’s recurring patterns and archteypes. Her bold linking device is seven silent women to accompany the orchestral interludes‚ who enact the stages of life that Mélisande gradually and irreversibly traverses‚ from her wide-eyed first encounter with Golaud to her tragic death at his hands. That might sound over-cerebral were it not for Fuchs’s intimate character play and a cunning set (designs by Yannis Thavoris) that neatly straddles naturalism and symbolism'

The Times (June 2010)

A production to savour

Opera Magazine (July 2010)

Of recent interpretations‚ Opera North’s must rank as one of the best. First seen in 2003‚ it has been to Australia and back‚ and now returns stronger than ever – thanks to a first-class ensemble and a staging by Olivia Fuchs that tickles the imagination while respecting the mysterious simplicity of the tale

Financial Times (June 2010)

Pimlico Opera’s trip to prison has now been an annual event for 20 years‚ during which some 50‚000 members of the public have gone ’inside’ and several hundred inmates have tasted the limelight‚ working with young professionals‚ in ways few ever expected. This year was Carmen in HMP Wandsworth‚ cut down to under two hours‚ directed by Olivia Fuchs and surviving gutsily intact.

Only five of the prisoners participating – whose nationalities included Polish‚ Romanian‚ Uzbechi and Turkish – spoke English. Carmen herself was voluptuously and smokily sung by Frances Bourne‚ who gave a fearlessly physical performance despite being seven months pregnant. The cast‚ pros and ams‚ ins and outs‚ worked with a great sense of team spirit. You can pontificate‚ with good reason‚ about the mutual benefits of an enterprise like this. But it’s simpler just to say that in all senses this Carmen was a captivating show.

Observer (March 2010)

Olivia Fuchs’s pacy‚ rough-theatre staging of Carmen inside the forbidding Victorian walls of HMP Wandsworth — Britain’s biggest jail — is no exception. The opera is cut by an hour (time off for good conduct?) and Toby Purser directs an unseen band in a scaled-down orchestration clearly done by someone who wants to help Bizet to release his inner Duke Ellington. But there’s nothing small-scale about the performances

The Times (March 2010)

But for the closest synthesis of intelligent direction‚ imaginative design‚ uninhibited performance‚ and a devastating realisation of the score‚ Olivia Fuchs’s Opera Holland Park staging of Kat’a Kabanova was the triumph of 2009.

Independent on Sunday (December 2009)

Two years ago‚ Olivia Fuchs directed an acclaimed no-frills production of Jenufa for this increasingly ambitious country-house-opera-for-townies company. Unfortunately I missed it‚ but if it was even half as good as her new Katya it must have been very good indeed…Fuchs and her resourceful designer gave us a Katya pared down to its scenic essentials‚ both handsome to look at and symbolic of a fragmented world which eventually destroys the life of its protagonist…Fuchs is a really sharp director of people‚ drawing brilliantly etched character portraits from all her cast…Any British company would have been proud of this Katya

Opera Magazine (October 2009)

Kát’a Kabanová‚ Janácek’s harrowing examination of sexual guilt‚ has always tended to bring out the best in British opera companies. Few of its recent stagings‚ however‚ have so unflinchingly probed its moral and emotional complexities as Olivia Fuchs’s exceptional new production for Opera Holland Park: this is the company’s greatest achievement‚ and arguably Fuchs’s as well.

The Guardian (August 2009)

Expressionism and verismo collide in Olivia Fuchs’s production of Kat’a Kabanova‚ the last and finest of Opera Holland Park’s 2009 season. As Boris Grigorjevic (Tom Randle) urges unhappily married Kat’a (Anne Sophie Duprels) to take his hand‚ the lovers step out on to the violet waters of the Volga‚ suspended on the pulse of Janácek’s score‚ uninhibited by the laws of nature or man. For this moment alone (lit exquisitely by Colin Grenfell)‚ Fuchs’s Kat’a would be unforgettable. As the centrepiece of a production in which closely observed character-work‚ rigorous attention to historical‚ social and psychological detail‚ fearless musicianship and realism and magic realism cohere‚ it is one of the most piercing and potent images I’ve seen……. There are no weak links. Every characterisation is thorough‚ every note sung with meaning‚ Randle’s ardent Boris and Duprels’s immersion in Kat’a’s guilt‚ longing and terror‚ like her Butterfly and Rusalka‚ sensational. Not simply the highlight of Holland Park’s season‚ this Kat’a Kabanova is the highlight of the summer.

Independent on Sunday (August 2009)

Once more‚ it’s striking how well Fuchs uses the space‚ in spite of its inherent limitations. The Edwardian costumes and designs (it’s updated slightly) by Yannis Thavoris are resourceful‚ giving Fuchs various platforms to use‚ as well as a revolving cage-like room to the left of the stage in the first two acts. If it’s not particularly subtle‚ nor is the opera itself‚ and Fuchs elaborates the drama atmospherically. The Personenregie is noticeably detailed‚ with most of the singers performing like actors and avoiding stock operatic gestures‚ and the oppression of both the people in general and Kát’a specifically. Fuchs also depicts the role of nature in this piece very effectively‚ with spiky cloud-like structures hanging over the stage‚ tall grass growing to the right hand side and the river flowing between walkways. I don’t think OHP could do a better job with their limited resources and shallow stage...In short‚ it’s an excellent production‚ cast and crew‚ and it deserves a bigger audience than it had at the performance I attended. Some tickets remain for the performances on 1‚ 5 and 7 August‚ and with prices from £10‚ it surely makes a bargain alternative to the Proms and the country house opera companies in the regions

Musical Criticism (August 2009)

As so often in the past‚ Opera Holland Park has found its best form when it is at its most ambitious. The season has not included any of the adventurous Italian verismo operas with which the company made its name‚ but its success with Janácek’s Jenufa two years ago has opened up a new avenue of possibilities. For this year’s Kátya Kabanová‚ the company’s second Janácek‚ many of the same team have been re-assembled. Based on Ostrovsky’s The Storm‚ the opera shows what happens when a build-up of tension in a rigid society explodes in a thunderstorm of a climax‚ and Opera Holland Park duly proves that lightning can strike twice in the same place.

Olivia Fuchs’ production acts like a lightning rod to the opera’s frustrated emotions. Although it is an exaggeration to have the townsfolk behaving like puppets‚ the contrast with poor Kátya and her longing for emotional freedom does become even more intense. Cradling her stomach as if sick with desire and singing her heart out‚ Anne Sophie Duprels became truly the eye of the storm – an outstanding portrayal............. Altogether‚ this was one of Opera Holland Park’s finest achievements.

Financial Times (July 2009)

This was a great achievement...the production was in the safe hands of Olivia Fuchs (whose wonderful Fidelio is to be revived there next year)

Musical Pointers (July 2009)

After their trail-blazing production of Jenufa two years’ ago‚ Opera Holland Park now turn their attention to Kat’a Kabanova‚ with director Olivia Fuchs returning to direct...After her success with Jenufa you can see why the management wanted to entrust this production of Kat’a to Olivia Fuchs...All in all this was a thrilling performance of one of the 20th century’s greatest operas

MusicOMH (July 2009)

After its huge success with Jenufa two years ago‚ Holland Park reassembles many of the same team to tackle Leos Janacek’s later masterpiece‚ a tale of a fragile‚ bullied woman who looks outside marriage for love. Once again the cast‚ conductor and orchestra‚ together with the production team‚ hit all the right buttons. This Kat’a Kabanova is a triumph...Director Olivia Fuchs charts Kat’a’s downfall with sensitivity...The principal performances are unimpeachable

The Stage (July 2009)

Kát’a Kabanová‚ Janácek’s harrowing examination of sexual guilt‚ has always tended to bring out the best in British opera companies. Few of its recent stagings‚ however‚ have so unflinchingly probed its moral and emotional complexities as Olivia Fuchs’s exceptional new production for Opera Holland Park: this is the company’s greatest achievement‚ and arguably Fuchs’s as well.

She updates the work from the 1860s to the early years of the 20th century‚ locating Kát’a’s tragedy within the wider context of the hypocrisies of a smugly affluent bourgeoisie. Kabanicha (Anne Mason) terrorises her family‚ but then plays S&M games with Dikoj (Richard Angas) when everyone’s back is turned. The women who stare dismissively at Anne Sophie Duprels’s Kát’a on her way back from church‚ and turn against her after her confession‚ are revealed to be comparably trapped in loveless marriages and yearning for freedom.

Duprels is wonderful in suggesting the depths of feeling beneath Kát’a’s fragility. The emotional ferocity of her singing sometimes seems out of proportion to her slight frame. She cowers in terror before Jeffrey Lloyd Roberts’s dangerous Tichon‚ and yields to Tom Randle’s vulnerable‚ gloriously sung Boris with shy rapture. Fuchs presents their passion as capable of briefly transcending the forces of society and nature that will eventually pull them apart.

Their final catastrophic encounter‚ in which the gestures of desire can only trigger the bitterest of memories‚ have a veracity and emotional nakedness that is disturbing in the extreme. Stuart Stratford’s conducting‚ lyrical yet violent‚ adds immeasurably to the intensity of it all.

The Guardian (July 2009)

Fuchs’ production of Kát’a Kabanová ‚ the last in OHP’s season‚ has a number of strengths: an elegant staging‚ a spectacular performance by the City of London Sinfonia under Stuart Stratford’s baton‚ and an excellent line-up of leads

What's On Stage (July 2009)

Garsington‚ too‚ makes amends for its feeble Vivaldi opera with a striking‚ modern-dress staging of The Rake’s Progress by Olivia Fuchs. With her designer‚ Niki Turner‚ Fuchs brings Auden and Kallman’s Hogarth-inspired text closer to the period of the composition (the middle of the 20th century) with sinister bowler-hatted extras playing Nick Shadow’s diabolical helpers as a cross between figures in a Magritte painting and the murderous yobs in Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Tom Rakewell’s descent from ambitious rural loafer to acquisitive man about town‚ ruined entrepreneur and madman is unerringly charted in this pitiless staging

Sunday Times (July 2008)

In Olivia Fuchs’s terrific production‚ the tiny stage is dressed like a bucolic parody‚ only to have the roaring boys and whores of London rip it apart and spirit us to punk hell for Tom Rakewell’s arrival in the capital of self-indulgence. Nudging him gently down the slippery slope to ruin was our master of ceremonies‚ Nick Shadow‚ in one of the best performances I’ve seen in the role. His physical and vocal presence made it totally credible that Rakewell should hang on his every word. And his over-familiar tactility towards his charge made the betrayal all the more chilling. The extraordinary lullaby of farewell to Rakewell by Anne Trulove had a chaste beauty heightened by Fuchs’s outstanding chorus work‚ which made something moving and poetic of the harrowing denouement in Bedlam

The Independent (June 2008)

For a more rigorous examination of virtue scorned‚ you should head to the countryside‚ where Olivia Fuchs’s stylish production of The Rake’s Progress....Smartly designed and lit by Niki Turner and Bruno Poet‚ Fuchs’s Rake takes inspiration from surrealist art and 1980s pop culture. The whores and roaring boys are post-punk teens with sullen mouths‚ asymmetrical haircuts and ripped fishnets‚ Mother Goose is a bosomy Zandra Rhodes-Vivienne Westwood hybrid‚ while the three retainers who silently serve Nick Shadow sport ashen faces and Magritte bowler hats.

Independent on Sunday (June 2008)

From the moment that Christopher Purves - dressed in top hat and tails - stepped through the curtains of Garsington’s picture frame proscenium‚ to stand silently for a few moments smiling sardonically at the audience‚ it was obvious that this Rake would be something special. Olivia Fuch’s brilliant production is confident and sure-footed‚ using every inch of the small stage space and nearby gardens in a totally coherent presentation of Tom Rakewell’s downfall. Complete with a fine set of principals and magnificent direction of the large and youthful chorus‚ Tom’s seduction by Nick Shadow and subsequent decline is marvellously portrayed; right from the opening master-stroke through to the epilogue warning that the devil finds work for idle hands. It is pacy‚ very funny and terribly sad by turns‚ a modern morality tale about super-rich celebrity.

Seen & Heard International (June 2008)

Olivia Fuchs’s intelligent production...Fuchs never overplays the caricatures and brings a genuinely light touch to the set pieces...It all fits together seamlessly...The closing moments‚ as Anne says her final farewell to Tom‚ are genuinely touching in a way that the end of this often chilly opera rarely is.

The Guardian (June 2008)

Olivia Fuchs and her designer Niki Turner set the opera within a gilded frame and update with bravado‚ handling the gang of punks and roaring boys with particular flair.

The Telegraph (June 2008)

Hogarth himself might have applauded...Olivia Fuchs’s crisply satirical staging‚ expertly tailored to the semi-outdoors ambience of Garsington‚ ensures that the modern relevance of this dark parable comes across loud and clear...There are many such incidental delights in Fuchs’s staging

The Times (June 2008)

Fuchs’s production has translated this uneven opera into a seductive‚ witty‚ touching entertainment.

Independent on Sunday (February 2008)

It’s an evening that builds to an uproarious and ultimately uplifting finish...Fuchs grabs the opportunities given her to end the evening on a crowd and eye-pleasing note

MusicOMH (January 2008)

The Director‚ Olivia Fuchs‚ intuitively grasps the soul of the opera.

Seen & Heard (January 2008)

Olivia Fuch‚ the director‚ heroically confined herself to directing an exceptionally fine cast.

Opera Magazine (August 2007)

Olivia Fuch’s production of Jenufa has received well deserved accolades from all sides. On a smaller budget and mounting her Jenufa in OHP’s new tent yields nothing to either of them. (Her OHP Fidelio easily eclpised Covent Garden’s recent production‚ and Macbeth too was one of the best regular operagoers can remember.) She has a dream cast of principals and malleable singer/actors for all the rest of a large cast‚ who have to be moved in and out of Jenufa’s foster-mother’s cramped living quarters across the wide and narrow stage at Holland Park. This is achieved with aplomb‚ and I particularly liked her management of the friends and villagers in the non-realistic scenes with dances...For the main protagonists‚ every gesture and movement was apt and telling. Most reviewers have concentrated on the singers‚ so I stress particularly Olivia Fuchs’ brilliant deployment of them all.

Musical Pointers (June 2007)

Director Olivia Fuchs...without doubt‚ she got to the heart of this grim but uplifting story.

Musical Criticism (June 2007)

Olivia Fuchs’s tightly focused staging of Janacek’s heartbreaker rightly zeroes in on its tensions as a domestic drama‚ played out only in its latter stages as a public scandal

The Guardian (June 2007)

Opera Holland Park’s wonderfully simple production is all the stronger for playing it absolutely straight...All praise to Olivia Fuchs for trusting this tale to do its own work

The Telegraph (June 2007)

When a low-budget enterprise such as Opera Holland Park pulls off a production which has you gripped throughout‚ the achievement is all the more remarkable. This was the case with Olivia Fuchs’s intelligent staging of Janacek’s Jenufa‚ the second new production in the 2007 season.

ThisisLondon.co.uk (June 2007)

Good that Opera Holland Park entrusted their 2005 opening production to Olivia Fuchs‚ whose Fidelio at Holland Park is etched on our memories.

Musical Pointers (June 2005)

Fuchs’s handling of the witches — often sent up by serious directors embarrassed by Verdi’s jaunty‚ rollicking choruses — is one of the most striking aspects of her staging. They infiltrate Macbeth’s illicit court and celebrate Malcolm’s restoration by reconvening their coven to foment more mischief. Fuchs proposes a Macbeth that glories in the anarchic‚ disturbing power these women represent‚ and the female chorus rises magnificently to the occasion.

Sunday Times (June 2005)

Fuch’s wonderfully effective new production...suddenly‚ the heightened emotions of Verdi’s score all make sublime sense.

Metro (July 2004)

Olivia Fuch’s overwhelming staging is proof positive that opera is intended for the stage and not CDs. Fuchs unerringly demonstrates how money and power will ruthlessly manipulate and destroy.

The Stage (July 2004)

It’s clear that director Olivia Fuchs has considerable talent - she is a gifted storyteller - unafraid to probe beneath the surface charms of Rusalka.

Opernwelt (November 2003)

Opera North’s new production...should not be missed...Olivia Fuchs’s production touched the heart chillingly.

Financial Times (October 2003)

Olivia Fuchs’s new production for Opera North...is one of the most harrowing experiences I could imagine recommending . It’s also one ofthe most fascinating; well directed‚ expertly sung and acted...

Independent on Sunday (October 2003)

This is music theatre at its most powerful and affecting‚ as is Olivia Fuchs’s witty‚ stylish and equally moving new production of Rusalka.

Observer (October 2003)

The new production of Rusalka is also worth travelling a long way to see.

Sunday Times (October 2003)

Unforgettable...very highly recommended

The Guardian (June 2003)

A stirring new production of Fidelio..Olivia Fuchs’s modern-day setting catches the sweaty insecurity of tyranny.

Sunday Telegraph (June 2003)

Fuchs’s production‚ triumphantly opening Opera Holland Park’s season‚ also proves this opera’s versatility. Fuchs’s direction... worked only wonders.

The Times (June 2003)

The remarkable economy of this staging forces us to imagine the real scenes and question the hauntings. A mirror in an Edwardian hanging cupboard becomes a window with a ghost looking through. A school table is Miles’s virtuoso piano keyboard. Chaise longues are beds‚ as if everybody’s camping out at Bligh. But Olivia Fuchs’s hard focus on character and imagination is not in the least camp in this rough and ready‚ emotionally gripping production.

Evening Standard (May 2000)

Unlike Olivia Fuchs and Rae Smith in their economical and intelligent Brighton Festival Opera production‚ Crowley’s designer …. But both stagings share a simplicity and immediacy that are utterly gripping.

Independent on Sunday (May 2000)

Olivia Fuchs directs with skill and sensitivity‚ in a set intelligently designed by Rae Smith‚ and the orchestra plays enthusiastically‚ conducted by Dominic Wheeler.

Daily Telegraph (June 1998)

In the premiere at the Lyric Hammersmith by Olivia Fuchs‚ who also wrote the libretto‚ the Robson brothers – countertenor and tenor – certainly fulfilled all the dramatic expectations. They produced performances of compelling concentration in which the smallest gesture speaks volumes.

The Guardian (June 1998)

Like Lunn’s music‚ Fuchs’ direction avoids expressionistic extremes‚ while her skilfully condensed libretto allow the composer to work swiftly.

The Independent (June 1998)

Olivia Fuchs’ direction gets fine performances from the brothers Robson‚ counter-tenor Christopher‚ tenor Nigel‚ observing Genet’s own wishes for male performers…An intriguing 90 minutes.

Time Out (June 1998)

Olivia Fuchs’s delicate production

The Times (January 1993)

remarkably inventive ... layers of illusion‚ fantasy and dream through which the spectator moves as if spellbound

Financial Times (January 1993)