ABOUT
I am a mixed-race (British Pakistani/White British) director and writer, mainly working in opera and comedy. I studied History at UCL, and Opera Making at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. My work has been performed at the Royal Opera House, Scottish Opera, Grimeborn Festival and Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, in addition to performances in the Canada, the USA, and Germany.
I have previously directed operas including Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (2021, Tête à Tête: The Opera Festival, 2022, COLAB Tavern), a new interactive opera, Don Jo!, a cabaret 'cover version' of Mozart's Don Giovanni (2019, Grimeborn Festival), and Kurt Weill's The Tsar Wants His Photograph Taken (2016 and 2019, Bloomsbury Theatre). I am Artistic Director of Virtually Opera, experimenting with fusion opera since 2016. I also directed the staged concerts Schiller: The Operas (2017), Gazing in, Gazing Out (2017) and Lieder, Leaders, & Lovers (2017).
Outside of opera, I have particularly enjoyed directing Shakespeare's Macbeth (2020-2021) and Anthony and Cleopatra (2019) for the York Shakespeare Project. I frequently work with academics at UCL Hebrew and Jewish Studies, curating the Festival of Early Jewish Cinema in 2023. and directing cabarets written by inmates of the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
I also work as a writer and librettist. My operas include Come Bargain With Uncanny Things (2021, 2022), We Sing/I Sang (2020), The Perfect Opera (2018), and The Left Fang (2017). I also adapted Pagliacci for the Royal Opera House's Opera Dots series. My other writing includes A War Game (2017) and the clown play A Speaks, which was part of the Hotbed Festival at Camden People’s Theatre. I also work as a translator, most recently translating The Tsar Wants His Photograph Taken for its Scottish premiere at Scottish Opera.
My research interests include international through-sung drama and cinematically-filmed opera. I also frequently work with academic composers to create pieces relating to their research interests.
When not directing or writing, Leo can be found marketing for fringe arts companies, creating TTRPGs (including the award winning Beckett's Tavern), and Tweeting @LeoDoulton or Facebooking at www.facebook.com/LeoDoultonOfficial/)
