Max Mason

Biography

A Double-First Class graduate from Cambridge University, Max is a British stage director, now anticipating a move to the United States as a graduate director in the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music’s opera faculty, the recipient of their Patricia Corbett full scholarship, and latterly as a visiting research assistant at Yale University. 

Max’s artistic career began in the West End at the Donmar Warehouse in 2014, in Brian Friel’s adaptation of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. Since then, he has (luckily for his fellow castmates!) become a director. In opera, Max has worked at the Cambridge University Opera Society, assistant directing at the National Opera Studio and at Waterperry Opera Festival, where he was a Young Artist for a ‘seriously impressive’ summer festival (The Spectator). He is currently a director with the British Youth Opera, directing a series of scenes on the stage at Garsington Opera as part of the Serena Fenwick youth development programme. He has recently returned assistant directing the National Opera Studio’s Cardiff tour, and directing Cosi fan tutte with the Manchester-based company The Opera Collective.

In writing, Max’s remarks have been published in Varsity, Cambridge’s student press, and more recently quoted in The Independent, The Guardian, and his comments on rehearsing Handel’s oratorio Saul is included in the interdisciplinary study ‘Music and the Politics of Censorship’, edited by James Garrett.

In academia, whilst in Cambridge, Max was the Linton Seu-Kwan Chu Prize Winner in his College, the 2023 Irène Némirovsky Grant recipient for research into French-Jewish studies, and the Matthew Walley Choral Award Holder. He has previously worked, in an administrative capacity, assisting the Chapel & Choir of Jesus College, Cambridge.

Max is interested in how to cultivate his experience in music-theatre, especially to enrich his skills as an assistant on large scale and technically ambitious work, and to support Fermata further realise its mission to produce low-cost, accessible opera for more communities and people.