A different tune

The man who helped turn NZ Opera's fortunes around tells ELISABETH EASTHER opera can be funny, moving and disconcerting

Thomas de Mallet Burgess is a UK theatre and opera director whose work has taken him all over the world. For the past five years, he has been general director of New Zealand Opera, leading the company through Covid, upheaval and regrowth. He is leaving after the Auckland season of NZO’s current tour of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte to become artistic director of the Finnish National Opera.

Your name is rather ornate. What is your whakapapa?

I was born in beautiful Barnstaple, in North Devon, where my father’s family have lived for at least 400 years, and my mother grew up in London. We also have connections with Wales and France. Science enables us to go much further back, with the largest concentration of maternal DNA coming from Bangalore, India, Albania, and a particularly hostile tribe of Berbers in Libya.

You studied at Oxford. Was that predetermined or did you forge that path?

Neither of my parents went to university, but they completely supported my journey because they saw the value of education. My father’s family-building business had been in our town for centuries, and he saw the world was changing and opening up, which meant different choices needed to be made.

Did Oxford meet your expectations?

Oxford was wonderful, because we were taught to think. Intellect is not feared there, it is respected. Free thinking based on research and conviction is encouraged. I read philosophy and modern languages, French and some Russian. Oxford isn’t just about academic work, and a multitude of things are pursued there at a professional level, like journalism, drama and sport.

Is it true that the first opera you ever saw, you also directed?