Tim Bronson Reginald Albery (born 4 June 1952) is an English stage director, best known for his productions of opera.

Life and career

Albery was born in Harpenden

Harpenden

Harpenden is a town in Hertfordshire, England.The town's total population is just under 30,000.-Geography and administration:There are two civil parishes: Harpenden and Harpenden Rural....

, the son of the impresario Donald Albery

Donald Albery

Sir Donald Arthur Rolleston Albery was an English theatre impressario who did much to translate the adventurous spirit of London in the 1960s into theatrical reality....

 and grandson of the producer Sir Bronson Albery

Bronson Albery

Sir Bronson James Albery was an English theatre director and impresario. He was knighted in 1949 for his services to the theatre. The Albery Theatre in London was named in his honour and his son, Sir Donald Albery, was also a theatrical impresario.-References:...

. After directing drama in the British provinces, he directed his first operatic production, Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

's The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw is a novella written by Henry James. Originally published in 1898, it is ostensibly a ghost story.Due to its ambiguous content, it became a favourite text of academics who subscribe to New Criticism. The novella has had differing interpretations, often mutually exclusive...

for a music festival at Batignano

Batignano

Batignano is a small town in southern Tuscany, a frazione of the comune of Grosseto, positioned at about 10 km north-east of the capital on one of the last foot-hills of the valley of Ombrone which dominated the ancient city of Roselle....

, Italy in 1983. For Opera North

Opera North

Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle...

, Albery directed operas by Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

, Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 and most notably Berlioz

Hector Berlioz

Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...

: his production of Les Troyens

Les Troyens

Les Troyens is a French opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself, based on Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid...

is described by The New Grove Dictionary of Opera

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...

as "triumphant".

For the English National Opera

English National Opera

English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...

 (ENO), Albery directed Berlioz’s Beatrice and Benedict

Béatrice et Bénédict

Béatrice et Bénédict is an opera in two acts by Hector Berlioz. Berlioz wrote the French libretto himself, based closely on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing....

(1990) and Britten’s Billy Budd

Billy Budd (opera)

Billy Budd is an opera by Benjamin Britten, from a libretto by E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 1 December 1951. It is based on the short novel Billy Budd by Herman Melville....

(1988) and Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes

Peter Grimes is an opera by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto adapted by Montagu Slater from the Peter Grimes section of George Crabbe's poem The Borough...

(1991). Together with his fellow directors, Richard Jones

Richard Jones (director)

Richard Jones is a British theatre and opera director.- Early life :Jones was born in London, and studied at the University of Hull and London...

, Jude Kelly

Jude Kelly

Judith Pamela Kelly OBE is a theatre director and producer from Liverpool, England.Kelly founded Solent People's Theatre, a touring company in 1976, and was artistic director of the Battersea Arts Centre from 1980 to 1985. In 1986, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company...

, Phyllida Lloyd

Phyllida Lloyd

Phyllida Lloyd CBE is an English director, best known for her work in theatre and as the director of the most financially successful British film ever released, Mamma Mia!.-Career:...

, Deborah Warner

Deborah Warner

Deborah Warner CBE is a British director of theatre and opera known for her interpretations of the works of Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Büchner, and Henrik Ibsen, and for her long-term working relationship with the Irish actress Fiona Shaw.-Early years:Warner was born in Oxfordshire,...

 and Francesca Zambello

Francesca Zambello

Francesca Zambello is a leading American opera and theatre director. Zambello lived in Europe when she was a child, learning to speak French, Italian, German and Russian. Zambello is of Italian descent, the daughter of Jean , an actress and Charles C. Zambello, a former actor who became head of...

, Albery publicly supported ENO's general director Nicholas Payne in his dispute with the ENO's chairman Martin Smith over avant garde productions. They wrote, "The aim must be to create a new audience that does not see opera as a middle class trophy art form: an audience that Payne was beginning to attract to the Coliseum."

For Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera

Scottish Opera is the national opera company of Scotland, and one of the five national performing arts companies funded by the Scottish Government...

, Albery directed Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's Ring

Der Ring des Nibelungen

Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cycle of four epic operas by the German composer Richard Wagner . The works are based loosely on characters from the Norse sagas and the Nibelungenlied...

cycle between 1999 and 2003, and Mozart's Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni

Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...

in 2006.

Grove's Dictionary describes Albery's style as "a modern visual and dramatic language that combined stillness, taut economy, intense feeling for states of psychological and poetic complexity, and deep musical responsiveness" creating "a powerful impression of musico-dramatic revelation."