Dionysios Kyropoulos BMus, MPhil
Dionysios is a stage director, teacher and researcher, specialising in historical acting and gesture. He began his study of stagecraft at the Theatre of Changes drama school in Greece before reading music at City University London and studying singing with Robert Dean at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His research on reconstruction of historical acting started in 2011 and was further developed during his MPhil studies at the University of Cambridge and his visiting research fellowship at Harvard University. He is currently completing his doctoral studies at the University of Oxford.
As a singer Dionysios has performed numerous operatic roles in the UK and abroad, and has worked with companies including the British Youth Opera, Cambridge Handel Opera, MidAmerica Productions, Riverside Opera, Tara Arts, Mantissa Opera, Lucid Arts, Rose Opera Company and Skull of Yorick Productions.
As a stage director he has directed Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo (2013), Purcell’s The Indian Queen (2014), Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (2014) and Cavalli’s Gli amori d’Apollo e di Dafne (2015) at the Teatro Principal de Burgos in Spain. Other directing work includes Tamerlano, Partenope and Rodelinda by Handel, Livetta e Tracollo by Pergolesi for Clare College Music Society in Cambridge, and Molière’s comedy The Doctor in Spite of Himself performed in March 2015 at the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford. In May 2015 he directed Timothy Kraemer’s children’s opera Ulysses and the Wooden Horse, in June 2015 Coward’s comedy Hay Fever, in October 2015 Purcell’s dramatic opera The Prophetess at the Keble O’Reilly Theatre in Oxford, and in December 2015 David Earl’s new opera Strange Ghost at the Cambridge Festival Theatre. In April 2016 he directed Blow’s Venus and Adonis for Benslow Music, and in May 2016 Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at the Oxford Playhouse, followed by Casanova’s Conquest, a pasticcio devised by Julian Perkins and Stephen Pettit, at Kings Place London.
Dionysios started teaching acting in 2012 at the Opera Ensemble of City University London, where he gave undergraduate music students theoretical and practical training in operatic performance. In the summers of 2013, 2014 and 2015 he worked as a tutor of historical stagecraft at the Baroque Opera Studio of the University of Burgos in Spain, and in 2014 he founded Theatron Novum, a theatre and opera production company at the University of Oxford, offering acting training to young performers and experimenting with the development of techniques for reviving period stagecraft. He has also worked as historical acting coach for the International Rameau Summer School in London in September 2015 and August 2016, and for Benslow Music in Hitchin in April 2016, March 2017 and November 2017.
He trained in Baroque gesture with Jed Wentz, Ian Caddy, Andrew Lawrence-King, Steven Player and Victoria Newlyn. Throughout his training Dionysios has received scholarships, grants and support from the Life Action Trust, the Leventis Foundation, New College Oxford, Clare College Cambridge, Harvard University, the South Square Trust, the Joan Conway Fund, and the Hellenic College Trust. His doctoral studies are funded by the Onassis Foundation.
Dionysios is Professor of Historical Stagecraft, teaching historical acting, gesture and movement at the Department of Historical Performance and the Department of Vocal Studies.