Biography

Stuart Stratford read music at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, studying conducting with David Parry and later in Russia, at the Saint Petersburg State Conservatoire, Simphonic and Operatic Conducting Faculty, for three years with the legendary conducting teacher, Ilya Aleksandrovich Musin. He was the Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester in 1999 and 2000.

He made his debut for English National Opera in 2004 taking over the controversial Calixto Bieito production of Don Giovanni and returns there in February-March 2010 with Philip Glass's Satyagraha. For Opera North he has conducted Pagliacci, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the new Jonathan Dove opera, Swanhunter.

He is a regular conductor at Opera Holland Park and has staged performances of Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, Jenufa, Iolanta and Katya Kabanova.

He has worked at the Almeida Opera Festival and has given many first performances of major new works: Tobias and the Angel (Dove), Ion (Param Vir), Kantan (Goehr), L'altra Euridice (Dove), Ariadne (Langer) and The Embalmer (Batistelli). He has staged The Turn of the Screw, Falstaff and Pagliacci for English Touring Opera, and Francesca Zambello's La Boheme with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the Albert Hall. Community involved projects are an important aspect of his work – with Graham Vick on Candide with Birmingham Opera Company and as music director of English National Opera's Palace in the Sky (Dove) in 2000.

He currently conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra's series of family and 'Funharmonics' concerts, performing at the Barbican, Festival and Queen Elizabeth Halls in London. He has conducted concerts with many of the UK orchestras including the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia, Manchester Camerata and the orchestra of Welsh National Opera.

In Portugal he works with the Porto Symphony Orchestra, the Remix Ensemble and the Orchestra of the Algarve. In Russia he has worked from Siberia to Turkmenistan. In autumn 2008 Stuart organised and conducted a festival of contemporary British music with the Ural Symphony Orchestra (Yekaterinburg) where he gave the Russian premiere of Momentum (Turnage) and Airport Scenes (Dove). With the Australian Chamber Orchestra in Sydney he has recorded a joint Channel 4 and Australian Broadcasting Corporation film opera, The Eternity Man, which was shown in both the UK and Australia at the end of 2008.

He has made his debut recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra for Opera Rara of I Normanni a Parigi by Mercadante in the spring of 2009 and this should be released in the beginning of 2010.

Currently Stuart is performing Satyagraha by Philip Glass at English National Opera having recently returned from the International Music Festival in Cartagena, Colombia, with the City of London Sinfonia - an orchestra which he now has strong ties.