Biography

Ben Woodward is Artistic Director of Regents Opera (formerly Fulham Opera), known as the largest and most ambitious fringe opera company in London.

He has been Repetitor mit Dirigierverpflictung at the SH-Landestheater in Flensburg, Germany, where he conducted performances of Singin in the Rain, Guys and Dolls and Der fliegende Holländer, and assisted on Vanessa, Manon Lescaut and Le Grand Macabre. He has also worked at the Staatsoper Hannover and the Musiktheater im Revier, Gelsenkirchen.

With Fulham Opera, he has conducted performances of Don Carlo and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, for which Opera Magazine praised his “flair” and “real poetry” and Strauss’s Die Ägyptische Helena, which received 5 stars from Opera Now magazine and 4 stars in The Times.

He has also led Fulham Opera in productions of Falstaff, Simon Boccanegra and Der fliegende Holländer, as well as a 2014 complete Ring Cycle, in which he led a small ensemble from the piano.

He has started a three-times yearly orchestral workshop programme, where he leads a full symphony orchestra through some of the largest opera repertoire available over a weekend. With this orchestra he has tackled six operas by Strauss, Peter Grimes, the Lyric Symphony of Zemlinsky, Otello, Der fliegende Holländer, and the complete Ring.

He has and continues to lead tours of operas across the UK. Between 2015-17 these were Le Nozze di Figaro, La Boheme and Rigoletto, and since 2021 La Traviata, and 2022 will see him lead tours of Carmen.

He has also worked for Opera Up Close, Opera de Baugé as both repetiteur and chorus master, Grange Park Opera as assistant chorus master, Opera Loki, Opera Vera and Focus Opera.

A passionate vocal coach, he maintains a thriving coaching studio in both Berlin and London and is a visiting coach at the Berlin Dramatic Voices Academy. He has also instituted a competition for the singing of the works of Verdi in memory of one of his co-founders of Fulham Opera.

Ben was a student of organ, piano and viola at Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester, was organ scholar at Trinity College, Cambridge, and then an organist at Christ Church, Greenwich, CT, USA and Director of Music at St Mary RC Church, Stamford, CT. During this time he was Assistant Artistic Director of the New Baroque Soloists, for whom he played continuo harpsichord, including several performances of Bach’s 5th Brandenburg concerto, organ and also edited many baroque works for performance across New England.

He lives in Berlin with his wife – soprano Catharine Woodward, and their cat Kira.