Born and raised in Port Talbot, south Wales, Adele Thomas, 41, is an award-winning director noted for her highly physical, pared-back stagings for theatre and opera. Since directing student theatre while at Cambridge University, she has worked across the UK and abroad. Shows include The Oresteia and Thomas Tallis at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Under Milk Wood at the Royal & Derngate theatre in Northampton. She now works predominantly in opera and has directed Vivaldi’s Bazajet (Royal Opera House and Irish National Opera), Handel’s Berenice and, earlier this year, In the Realms of Sorrow at the London Handel festival with Stone Nest. Thomas makes her Glyndebourne festival debut this summer with Handel’s Semele (23 July-26 August). Her production of Verdi’s Il trovatore, already seen in Zurich, will be at the Royal Opera House, London, 2 June-2 July.
We should start with your Welsh background, and the way it feeds into your work.
I come from a traditional working-class background. When I was growing up in Port Talbot, it was a place to escape from, to rail against. London, the metropolitan life, seemed to be where I should be. The expectation at school was that we’d be lucky to get a job in the town’s steelworks, directly opposite the school. Ambition wasn’t encouraged. Now I feel totally differently. I realise that the place has a sort of magic to it. It’s like a creative wellspring. So many actors have come from there: Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins, Michael Sheen. That sense of the Welsh bard, the lone beautiful speaker walking across the hillside – that really carries through to acting. And the collective idea of performance is reflected in Welsh choral singing. But directing? Standing up and telling others how to do it? That’s something I didn’t know about, growing up.
Now you have a national and international career, isn’t the draw you had towards London, the bright lights and the big city, again irresistible?
No. I’m based in Wales. I feel I’m a Welsh, rather than British, artist. That identity is who I am. It’s important to me that I keep out of that London algorithm. My background has shaped me – not least the perfectionism I got from my dad, a highly skilled toolmaker, and the work ethic I got from both my parents. They aren’t artistic. I didn’t grow up going to the opera. But now they, too, love it. They ring me up to tell me when they see Antonio Pappano on the TV.
Without any obvious support, what fired your ambition to work in theatre?
School was very drab, apart from a music teacher called Mr Dunn who was fantastic. We got free music lessons – I played clarinet – and music classes up to GCSE. I’d never be able to do what I now do without that grounding. And I wouldn’t be able to do it today, because those music lessons don’t exist… The big change was when I went to Gorseinon sixth form college in the Gower. It was heaven, like a nonstop summer camp. That’s where I really began to experience all forms of arts – film, drama, visual art – and see possibilities. It’s also where I met my boyfriend, Paul, who’s now a musician. We’ve been together since we were 16. Without Gorseinon, I’d never have felt confident enough to deal with going to Cambridge. But it wasn’t until the end of my time as a student that I realised what I really wanted to do was direct.
You started your career at Shakespeare’s Globe, among other places…
I concentrated on theatre for about 15 years because I couldn’t get into opera. I couldn’t get a meeting with anyone. When I did, I didn’t look right or sound right. It was as if I was a vagrant who’d wandered into the building. I couldn’t say I’d been to my first opera with my parents when I was 10 because I hadn’t. I could only say I’d been to the Taibach Rugby Club panto – a total theatrical experience staged by ex-rugby players and the youth team, and a sellout every year where everyone got legless. Total chaos, total brilliance, total inspiration. Only after I established myself in theatre did I get the chance, or get noticed in opera.
Recently you laid out on social media the low income available to anyone working in theatre and opera. How can you persuade anyone to care?
There’s a danger of there being no new blood, no new voices, no culture coming out of the working classes, no voice of dissent. In theatre, you need a private income to manage just to live, pay rent, buy food. A director doing four shows – which is, anyway, too many to really manage – might scrape £20,000 per year. The UK is historically suspicious about art, and paying artists. It’s not a hobby. It’s a job.
You’re doing Verdi’s Il trovatore soon. How did you find this grand 19th-century opera, with its outlandish plot?
It’s a strange old piece, the drama heightened – I’ve found visual parallels with Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel [the Elder]. I firmly believe there’s no one alive who wouldn’t love something in this opera. It’s about different kinds of storytelling – the title means “the troubadour” – and about obsession, ecstasy, big choruses. It’s full of wild contrasts of tone, colour, music.
And straight after Trovatore you’re back with Handel for your Glyndebourne debut. Semele is always described as a “bawdy” opera about a vain woman. Is that fair?
In Ovid’s version of the story, and in the reimagining by Ted Hughes, Semele never gets to say much and is just a blank, giggling girl who sleeps her way to the top and gets her comeuppance. But I was immediately suspicious. Handel has such empathy, such understanding. I couldn’t believe he would create a creature who was that and nothing more. And so it proves. It’s far more complicated and interesting.
You’re getting all this work, but female opera directors are still in the minority.
Certainly, few are doing main works from the canon. Deborah Warner and Katie Mitchell do so much fantastic, high-profile work that we tend to think there’s no problem. But by doing a big, “male” work like Il trovatore I’m putting myself in the firing line. I watched about 20 productions on DVD and all were directed by men.
And how do you switch off?
Running. In lockdown I was doing about 40km a week. It’s how I start to think about a staging, too. I was running to Semele one act at a time and getting ideas. But I devour music of every kind. I’ve had my Swansea funk and soul period. I love 60s mods – the Beatles, the Animals – or 90s dance music. I’ll listen to anything from Lil Nas X to Purcell to disco. You want my playlist? Sure. I’ll send it over…
Il trovatore is at the Royal Opera House, London, 2 June-2 July. Semele is at Glyndebourne, 23 July-26 August
