Aidan Lang

Aidan Lang is the General Director of WNO. Prior to his appointment, he served as General Director of Seattle Opera from 2014-2019 and General Director of New Zealand Opera from 2006-2014.

He began his career as a Staff Director at Glyndebourne, before joining Welsh National Opera, where he directed the small tour productions of The Barber of Seville and Hansel and Gretel, as well as the mainstage production of Count Ory.

In 1990, he was appointed as the first Artistic Director of Opera Zuid, a then newly created touring company based in Maastricht in the Netherlands where his productions included Werther, Ariadne auf Naxos, Don Giovanni and The Cunning Little Vixen. Concurrent with this, he also held the positions of Director of Production at Glyndebourne Touring Opera where among others, he directed La bohème and the British première of Cornet Christoph Rilke's Song of Love and Death by Siegfried Matthus.

Between 2000-2006, he was Artistic Director of the Buxton Festival, and was also busy as a freelance director working around the world, including the first Brazilian production of Wagner's Ring at the historic Teatro Amazonas in Manaus. Other noted productions include Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (Lisbon), The Turn of the Screw (Salzburg) and the British première of The Magic Fountain by Frederick Delius (Scottish Opera).

In 2006, he became General Director of New Zealand Opera, working there until to 2014. He was responsible for the expansion of the company's reach beyond its initial performing centers in Auckland and Wellington to include Christchurch, thereby rebranding New Zealand Opera as a truly national company serving the entire country.

In 2014, he moved to the US to become General Director of Seattle Opera. His tenure in Seattle saw a large growth of younger opera-goers, along with the development and opening of a new $60 million opera centre, which houses all of Seattle Opera’s operations, including dedicated facilities for its greatly expanded education and community engagement programmes.

In July 2019, he returned to WNO as its General Director.