Canadian director Robert Carsen made his Royal Opera debut in 2007 with Iphigénie en Tauride and returned in 2012 to direct Falstaff, for both of which he co-created the lighting design. In the ²⁰¹³⁄₁₄ Season the Company performed his award-winning production of Dialogues des Carmélites, originally created in 1997 for Nederlandse Opera.

Carsen grew up in Toronto and moved to the UK to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic. He began his directing career in Geneva with Mefistofele, which also toured the USA, and has since directed for the world’s leading opera houses. He has a close relationship with the Paris Opéra, where his productions include Tannhäuser, Capriccio and Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Other notable productions include Rigoletto (Aix-en-Provence Festival), Don Giovanni (La Scala, Milan), Der Ring des Nibelungen (Cologne, Venice and Barcelona), La traviata (La Fenice, Venice), The Queen of Spades (Zürich), Der Rosenkavalier (Salzburg), a Janácek cycle (Opéra national du Rhin), Ariadne auf Naxos (Bavarian State Opera) and L’incoronazione di Poppea and Rinaldo (Glyndebourne Festival).

Carsen’s theatre credits include Mother Courage (Milan) and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (New York), and in music theatre The Beautiful Game (West End), Sunset Boulevard (UK tour), My Fair Lady (Théâtre du Châtelet) and Candide (Théâtre du Châtelet, English National Opera and La Scala). Other work includes designs for various museums, including the Musée d’Orsay exhibition L’Impressionnisme et la Mode, also seen in Chicago.