Elijah Moshinsky

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Elijah Moshinsky (born 8 January 1946) is an Australian opera director, theatre director and television director who has worked at the Royal Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal National Theatre, BBC Television and numerous other venues.

Early years

Moshinsky's Russian Jewish parents had fled from Vladivostok to the French Quarter of Shanghai, where Elijah was born.[1] When he was five years old, the family moved to Melbourne. He graduated from the University of Melbourne and in 1973 won a scholarship to St Antony's College, Oxford, where he specialised in the study of Alexander Herzen.[2][3]

While still at St Antony's, Moshinsky directed a production of As You Like It for the Oxford and Cambridge Shakespeare Company.[2] When Sir John Tooley, the General Director at Covent Garden, saw the play, he offered Moshinsky a post as a staff producer for The Royal Opera.[3][4]

Opera director

In 1975, Moshinsky made his operatic debut at the Royal Opera House with "a stripped-down, low-budget production of Peter Grimes which won enormous popular and critical success."[1] Subsequent productions there include Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, The Rake's Progress, Macbeth, Samson et Dalila, Samson, Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Otello, Attila, Simon Boccanegra and Stiffelio.[2] At the Metropolitan Opera, he has directed, as well as Otello, Samson et Dalila and Samson, Un ballo in maschera, Ariadne auf Naxos, The Queen of Spades, The Makropulos Affair, Nabucco and Luisa Miller.[5] At English National Opera in 1982, he directed the British premiere of Le Grand Macabre as well as Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and The Bartered Bride. Other engagements have included Wozzeck for the Adelaide Festival, A Midsummer Night's Dream with Opera Australia and productions in Paris, Geneva and Florence.[2]

Theatre director

For the theatre stage, his credits include Troilus and Cressida and Thomas Bernhard's The Force of Habit at the Royal National Theatre in 1976, and, elsewhere in London: Three Sisters and Robert Storey's Light Up the Sky in 1987, Ivanov, Much Ado About Nothing and Another Time (all in 1989), Matador (1991), Becket (1991), Ronald Harwood's Reflected Glory (1992), Cyrano de Bergerac (1992–1993), Richard III (1999), plus Shadowlands in New York (1990–1991).[6]

Television director

Moshinsky has made a number of television films, mostly of operas. Non-operatic works, mainly for the BBC, include a number of Shakespeare's plays, televised between 1980 and 1985: All's Well That Ends Well, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Cymbeline, Coriolanus and Love's Labour's Lost, and also Ibsen's Ghosts (1986) and Richard Brinsley Sheridan's The Rivals (1987). He also directed a three-part serial version of Kingsley Amis' novel The Green Man (1990).[6]

Personal life

Moshinsky married Ruth Dyttman in 1970. They have two sons and live in London.[7]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Max Loppert: Moshinsky, Elijah, in vol. 3, p. 482, of Sadie, Stanley (ed) (1992). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-522186-2. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Moshinsky, Elijah, Director", in Adam, Nicky (ed) (1993). Who's Who in British Opera. Aldershot: Scolar Press. p. 196. ISBN 0-859-67894-6. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Stephen Fay: "The many sides of Elijah Who?", The Independent, 24 January 1993.
  4. ↑ Classical Music:: The Classical Source:: In Quest of the Inner Life: Elijah Moshinsky and Simon Boccanegra
  5. ↑ Metropolitan Opera performances: Elijah Moshinsky, MetOpera database. Accessed 12 November 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Elijah Moshinsky biography (1946)
  7. ↑ David M. Cummings: International Who's Who In Music and Musicians' Directory (in the Classical and Light Classical Fields), Volume One, 2000/2001, 17th edition, p. 454.

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