Oliver Mears to be Royal Opera House's director of opera

Oliver Mears, the artistic director of Northern Ireland Opera who once staged Britten Noye’s Fludde in Belfast zoo as part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, is to be the new director of opera at Covent Garden.

The Royal Opera House announced that 37-year-old Mears will succeed Kasper Holten, who leaves London in March 2017.

It is a surprise appointment and a huge step up. Mears, who came to opera as a 22-year-old after seeing an electrifying performance of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, has led the Belfast-based Northern Ireland opera company since it was founded in 2010.

Alex Beard, the ROH’s chief executive, said it was “a very exciting appointment.”

He said Mears had “successfully established Northern Ireland Opera as an important part of the UK opera scene as its founding artistic director, conceiving and delivering a range of innovative and impressive projects on and beyond the stage.”

One of Mears’s most important relationships will be with the Royal Opera’s director of music Antonio Pappano.

Pappano said: “I have been very impressed by Oliver Mears all through the selection process. He is fiercely intelligent, very knowledgeable about what is going on in the world of the performing arts, in particular theatre and opera, and he has genuine passion for our art form.

“I look forward to a very productive collaboration with him and wish him all success.”

Mears said: ‘I have had a wonderful time at Northern Ireland Opera over the last six years and am proud of the company’s growth and artistic excellence.

“I’m thrilled to be joining the Royal Opera to work alongside Antonio Pappano, Peter Katona, Cormac Simms, John Fulljames and the team – we have already had some inspiring conversations and I look forward to the future working together.”

After graduating in English and history at Lincoln College, Oxford, Mears looked set for a career in theatre, joining the playwright Howard Barker as an assistant.

But after discovering opera when in his 20s he changed tack and became one of the founding artistic directors of the London-based company Second Movement, directing many site-specific productions.

He brought some of that experience to Northern Ireland Opera where his successes included staging Britten’s Noye’s Fludde in Belfast Zoo, a production that travelled to Beijing and Shanghai. Other productions as director include Tosca, L’elisir d’amore, Der fliegende Holländer and Salome, hailed by the Guardian as “a startling achievement that confirms Northern Ireland Opera’s growing status as a force to be reckoned with.”

Mears has also directed productions for the Young Vic, Opera North, Scottish Opera and Bergen National Opera.

He replaces Holten, who announced last year he was returning to his native Denmark so his children can grow up there and to be closer to his family.