Herald Angel Award winner Jack Furness studied music at Cambridge University, where he received a double first-class honours degree. Whilst at Cambridge, Furness founded the ambitious and innovative Shadwell Opera, of which he is Artistic Director.
Engagements in the 2017-18 season include Don Giovanni at the Teatru Manoel, Malta; Iolanta for Scottish Opera; Written on Skin with the Melos Sinfonia and Scottish Opera’s Opera Highlights tour.
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The Rape of Lucretia
Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, January 2020
This staging by director Jack Furness resolves many of its difficulties, however, by dropping the pagan Roman warriors and their wives into a contemporary military battlefield hospital, with the male and female chorus characters as an army chaplain and a Red Cross paramedic, in whose voices the Christian message is sung. The double time-line is both visually striking and a familiar trope of contemporary fiction and television drama, as it could not have been 75 years ago.
Keith Bruce, The Herald, 20 January 2020
… director Jack Furness’ inspired choice of British soldiers in a military war zone abroad was an innovative and powerful take for the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland on Britten’s classical tale seen through the telescope of time.
David Smythe, Bachtrack, 19 January 2020
Where the Wild Things Are
Shadwell Opera, Alexandra Palace
An audience including many kids engaged effortlessly with Jack Furness’s simple but effective production ... Delivered by a highly energetic group of principals, Furness’s production – with sweeties and balloons (literally) thrown in – was unalloyed fun.
George Hall, The Stage, 31 October 2019
... this lo-fi but uproarious production deserves the chance to be seen more widely around the country... Jack Furness's staging boasted eccentric monsters (amazing what you can do with Seventies rock-god wigs and yellow Marigolds) and simple but striking effects.
Neil Fisher, The Times, 28 October 2019
Don Giovanni (Revival Director)
Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, September 2019
Es Devlin’s busy set has felt intrusively hyperactive on previous viewings, but at this revival directed by Jack Furness the show has a more consistent focus than hitherto.
George Hall, The Stage, 17 September 2019
Either Jack Furness, the revival director of the Royal Opera’s 2014 Mozart production, has been given remarkable licence to pep up Kasper Holten’s original staging or I am getting soft-hearted in my mature years. Either way, I found this show far more emotionally compelling than on its previous outing a year ago.
Richard Morrison, The Times, 17 September 2019
The Lighthouse
Shadwell Opera, Hackney Showroom, November 2017
Hackney Showroom is a long way from the sea. But in this austere room director Jack Furness and his designer Alex Berry skilfully evoke the claustrophobic intensity of extended isolation.
Claire Seymour, Opera Today, 12 November 2017
Jack Furness's vivid production...
Mark Valencia, WhatsOnStage, 4 November 2017
Furness and Downie Dear have created a spine-chilling setting for this operatic shaggy dog story.
Amanda Holloway, The Stage, 6 November 2017
Written on Skin
Melos Sinfonia, LSO St Luke's, October 2017
Deftly directed by Jack Furness...
Richard Morrison, The Times, 24 October 2017
In the Penal Colony
Shadwell Opera, Arts Theatre, June 2014
The early simplicity of Furness's production is traded in later in the show for some very graphic visuals - all the more shocking for emerging from nowhere... it certainly cuts to the violent heart of Kafka's story; suddenly we're not talking about the idea of torture so much as torture itself, a dramatic sleight-of-hand that's elegantly handled.
Alexandra Coghlan, NewStatesman, 23 June 2014
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