Roy Laughlin

Born in Belfast, Roy Laughlin graduated with First Class Honours in Modern Languages from Edinburgh University and in Music from Durham University. He joined the music staff of Opera North in Leeds at the Company’s inception and was their Head of Music from 1989 to 1995. For the Company he conducted many performances including Mozart’s The Jewel Box, Marriage of Figaro and The Magic Flute; Beethoven’s Fidelio; Bizet’s Pearl Fishers; Gounod’s Faust; Thomas’ Hamlet; Verdi’s Jerusalem, Attila, La Traviata, Il Trovatore and Don Carlos; Puccini’s Tosca; Nielsen’s Masquerade and Britten’s Peter Grimes. A highlight of his time at Opera North was his collaboration with Phyllida Lloyd in a new production of La Boheme.

For Glyndebourne Festival he assisted on The Rake’s Progress and Arabella and conducted Verdi's La Traviata and Macbeth and Hànsel und Gretel for Glyndebourne on Tour.  For English National Opera he has conducted Carmen and Leoncavallo’s La Boheme, and assisted on Pelléas et Mélisande, Der Rosenkavalier, and Cavalleri Rusticana/Pagliacci.

He has also conducted new productions of Falstaff for English Touring Opera; The Secret Marriage and Mozart’s Il re Pastore at the Cheltenham and Buxton Festivals; Rigoletto for The Opera Company; The Marriage of Figaro for Castleward Opera in Northern Ireland; La Boheme for British Youth Opera and a new version of Die Zauberflöte at the Grand Theatre, Luxembourg.

Recent and future plans include conducting a new production of The Barber of Seville in his debut with Opera Theatre Company, Dublin; new productions of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Mozart and Salieri and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi for Opera Fringe Northern Ireland to whom he returns this year to conduct a new production of Vaughan William's Riders to the Sea and a concert of choral and orchestral works by Handel; chief coach and assistant conductor on Previn’s A Streetcar Named Desire at the Theater an der Wien; on Britten’s The Rape of Lucretia with Klangforum Wien, in concert performances in Vienna and Cologne; on Le Nozze di Figaro in Strasbourg and on Janacek's Jenufa for Glyndebourne on Tour.

Currently a visiting Professor at the Guildhall School, he was Head of Music for the National Opera Studio from 1995 to 2007 where he regularly conducted their showcase performances in London with the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and the Royal Ballet Sinfonia.