Raised in Germany, Olivia Fuchs moved to London to study drama and train as an actor. She co-founded Cracked Mirror theatre company, later known as Theatre Works, and began her directing career by adapting European classics and staging new plays.
In all her opera-making, Fuchs is drawn to examining the complexities of our time through bold physical storytelling. She has developed a psychologically rigorous, physically expressive, and visually poetic style through which she seeks to illuminate the human condition and our relationships to ourselves, to each other, and to the natural world. Her collaborative approach and physical methodology explore the transformative power of opera to make change.
In the UK, Fuchs has directed main-house productions for English National Opera, Welsh National Opera, Opera North, and Scottish Opera, as well as acclaimed work in the Linbury Studio at the Royal Opera House. Internationally, she has directed for the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Opera Australia in Sydney, Ópera de Oviedo in Spain, and Danish National Opera, and she works regularly in Germany. Her production of Rusalka at the Sydney Opera House was awarded both the Helpmann and Green Room Awards for Best Direction and Best Production in Opera.
Alongside her main-house work, Fuchs enjoys creating projects in unusual spaces with a wide variety of performers, and in particular with young people
