Gassmann: L'Opera seria, La Monnaie / De Munt, Brussels, 2016 (detail) View full image

Patrick Kinmonth

Director, Designer

Kinmonth paces his direction from the tough first through a lively second to the turbulent third act with enormous skill. It's a celebration of theatre with great musical performances in a tasteful, technically highly professional production, that through characterisation and comic situations revives the wit of yesteryear.

Jan Brachmann, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, L'Opera seria, La Monnaie / De Munt, Brussels, 2016

...a rare thing, a true renaissance man.

Anna Wintour, Vogue Italia

Kinmonth left Oxford University with a first class degree in English Literature in 1979. Starting as Arts Editor at Vogue he broadened his scope as an artist to embrace painting, architectural and interior design, opera direction, stage and costume design, fashion curation and critical writing and is recognised as a leading international designer of opera, ballet, art and fashion exhibitions. Highlights include VOGUE100 at The National Portrait Gallery London (2016), HOUSE STYLE at Chatsworth (2017), and Valentino’s retrospectives at the Ara Pacis in Rome, at the Louvre in Paris and at Somerset House in London (2007-2013). He has collaborated on frequent design, exhibition, film and fashion projects for Missoni, Fendi, Gucci, Hermes and many others, as well as the restoration of the Wrightsman Galleries at the Metropolitan Museum New York where he also designed the exhibitions Dangerous Liaisons (2013) and Anglomania for the Costume Institute (2006). This year he designed and curated India in Fashion, a ground-breaking exhibition which opened the Nita Mukesh Ambani Cultural Centre in Mumbai.

In 2008 Kinmonth made his opera-directing debut, a lauded staging of Madama Butterfly for Cologne Opera. Since then he has directed and designed numerous productions including Samson et Dalila at Deutsche Oper Berlin, Don Giovanni and Rigoletto at Theater Augsburg, Die Gezeichneten, voted Best Opera Production of the season at Cologne Opera, Daphne at Toulouse, Solaris at Cologne Opera, Gassmann’s L’Opera Seria at La Monnaie, Brussels and La Clemenza di Tito at Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, The Seven Deadly Sins at The Royal Danish Opera 2022, amongst many others, including his Tannhäuser which opened the 2017-18 season at Cologne Opera where he returned in the 2019-20 season for Tristan und Isolde. His recent work includes productions in Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Opernhaus Zürich, Staatsoper Hamburg, American Ballet Theatre New York, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Ballet and Teatro de la Maestranza, Seville.