Lindy Hume

Director

Lindy Hume is one of Australia’s leading directors, acknowledged internationally for fresh interpretations of a wide variety of repertoire and progressive artistic leadership of Australian arts organisations and festivals including Perth Festival, Sydney Festival, and more recently Four Winds Festival and Ten Days on the Island, spanning the period 2004-2023. Her twelve thoughtful and welcoming festival programs have left a substantial legacy of stellar global creations, bold and diverse new Australian works, projects fore-fronting contemporary First Nation cultures, progressive socially engaged practice and deep community connections in regional and urban centres across Australia.

Equally at home in opera, Lindy Hume has served as Artistic Director of four Australian opera companies: West Australian Opera, Victorian Opera, OzOpera and Opera Queensland, and recently the interim role at Opera Australia of guest Creative Director for the Sydney Summer Season 2024. As a stage director, she regularly creates new theatre and opera productions in Australia, NZ, Europe, US and the UK, including major productions for renowned international companies such as Opera Philadelphia, Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Royal Swedish Opera Stockholm, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Aldeburgh Festival, Welsh National Opera and eight productions for New Zealand Opera.

In Australia she has created 80+ small-to-large-scale productions, several new Australian works, and won two Helpmann Awards, for best director and best production. She has created many productions for Opera Australia and the state companies as well as four Pinchgut Opera productions. Lindy Hume is well-known for creating popular and audience-friendly productions that are intelligent yet accessible, boldly theatrical and oriented toward feminist / humanist narratives. Most recent productions include The Marriage of Figaro and Cosi Fan Tutte for New Zealand Opera, Madama Butterfly for Welsh National Opera, Winter’s Journey for Musica Viva’s Australian tour and the Barbican, Rigoletto for Seattle Opera and Opera Philadelphia. In 2023/24 she directs Idomeneo for Opera Australia/Victorian Opera, Barber of Seville for Seattle Opera and Des Moines Metropolitan Opera and Gianni Schicchi/Suor Angelica for the Brisbane Conservatorium of Music.

Lindy Hume holds a Graduate Diploma in Arts Administration from the University of South Australia in 2007, an Honorary Degree of Doctor of Letters from The University of Western Australia in recognition of her contribution to the  cultural life of Western Australia, and in 2021 received her PhD from Queensland University of Technology. In the 2021 Australia Day Honours, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to the performing arts, particularly to opera.

Since 2005 Hume has chosen to live in regional Australia, and now travels between bases in Tathra on the Far South Coast of NSW and Port Sorell in the North of Tasmania. Her experience and deep interest in creative practice outside metropolitan centres inform her Currency House Platform Paper (2017) Restless Giant: Changing Cultural Values in Regional Australia and her recent PhD thesis A Bigger Picture: Toward a Landscape Oriented Creative Practice. Hume is recognised as one of Australia’s leading thinkers and writers on creative life in regional Australia. In 2023 she established Crimson Rosella Creative Adventures, a new creative/social enterprise based in regional NSW.