Professor Stephen Plaice

Stephen Plaice began his theatrical career in the mid-1970s at the National Theatre. Between 1987 and 2004 he was Writer-in-Residence at Lewes Prison, where he invited in a music theatre workshop team from Glyndebourne, leading to a longstanding relationship with the opera house. He was the librettist for the Glyndebourne children’s opera Misper and the youth opera Zoë by composer John Lunn, as well as three further main-stage operas.

A frequent collaborator with Sir Harrison Birtwistle, he wrote the libretto for the composer's chamber opera The Io Passion and the text for his oratorio Angel Fighter, premiered at the Bach Festival in Leipzig in 2010. In 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast his radio series The Romantic Road. He has also worked extensively in opera education, both in Britain and Germany, for over twenty years. In 2013 his opera Imago, composed by Orlando Gough, was staged by Glyndebourne. It won the RPS Award for Learning and Participation. He is currently commissioned by Swedish Royal Opera to write an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Amy Foster.