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Melly Still has worked as a director, choreographer, designer and adaptor. Her work has travelled throughout the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, the Far East, US and Broadway. She has been nominated as Best Director and for Best Design at both the Olivier and Tony Awards for her National Theatre production of Coram Boy.
Melly recently directed a new production of Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves for Theater St Gallen and returned to Glyndebourne in 2022, directing the Festival’s opening production: The Wreckers by Ethel Smythe; while her 2019 production of Rusalka was released to great acclaim on DVD. Melly will create new opera productions in the coming seasons for Welsh National Opera, Opera Köln and Santa Fe Opera.
In November 2019, Melly’s production of My Brilliant Friend - based on the acclaimed quartet of novels by Elena Ferrante - opened at the National Theatre, this epic production was first seen at the Rose Theatre, Kingston in 2017. Of the staging, Michael Billington of The Guardian wrote: “I am normally wary of novel adaptations but this version of Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet is something of a triumph. April De Angelis has skilfully condensed the story into a two-part, five-and-a-half-hour play spanning nearly 50 years. But bald statistics don’t do justice to Melly Still’s production, which combines an intimate study of female friendship with a panoramic picture of postwar Italy.”
Other recent productions include Cymbeline for the RSC; From Morning to Midnight and The Revenger’s Tragedy at the National Theatre; Captain Corelli’s Mandolin in London's West End and a UK and US Tour of The Lovely Bones.
Biography not for publication, for an up to date version please contact Oliver Clarke.
OWL Artist Management manages the Operatic Career of Melly Still. Melly Still is represented by Cathy King (cathyking@42mp.com) at 42 Management and Production Ltd for non opera work.
"The totally committed staging is by Melly Still... it makes the best possible case for the piece!" Nicholas Kenyon, The Daily Telegraph
"Something very special is happening at Nevill Holt this year. Opening night of The Magic Flutewas a triumph, setting a high standard for this year’s quite remarkable Festival. Director, Melly Still confirmed in her pre-concert talk there had been no cuts musically, she had been faithful to the literal text hoping for an excitingly nuanced production. This she certainly achieved! From that crisply played overture, the early use of the scrim-like strings falling from the ceiling (frequently serving to support the fluidity of the set) plus the encouraging debuts of young people on stage and backstage, this production is the reward for much hard work by the production team." Clive Peacock, Seen & Heard International
"A sustainable production, adhering to the baseline principles of the Theatre Green Book, the show presents in Ana Inés Jabares-Pita’s sparse sets a vision of a struggling, down-at-heel community, while Akhila Krishnan’s videos conjure a myriad of atmospheric seas and skies. Melly Still’s handling of the large chorus – on formidable form, incidentally – is unfailingly skilled." George Hall, The Stage
"They’re {Glyndebourne Chorus} superbly marshalled by Still, in a modern-dress staging that is strong on the dynamics of how individuals can be collectively transformed into a mob. Sets and costumes evoke a sinister world created from the detritus of the lives of others, where shadowy figures hover in the semi-darkness like the Fates of classical mythology, propelling the narrative remorselessly forward. By no means, I think, the neglected masterpiece that some have argued, but it’s hard to imagine it better done." Tim Ashley, The Guardian
"Where the performance won out was as a piece of drama. Director Melly Still and designer Ana Inés Jabares-Pita have created a coastal setting with a complex and inventive mixture of painted sets, video projections, nets, choreography of four dancers and a few carefully chosen props. It’s brilliantly atmospheric and by the middle of Act 2, I was completely caught up in the tense narrative." David Karlin, Bachtrack
"Melly Still’s staging, along with conducting of total conviction by Robin Ticciati, reveals not just a drama of powerful moral principles but a score of remarkable individuality and inspiration.... Still deploys the movements and gestures of the crowd to maximal effect, the handling of the ecstatic moments in Act 2 and the rising tension of Act 3 is superlative." Barry Millington, Evening Standard
"Glyndebourne has sprinkled some magic dust on the piece... its new production is theatrically and musically gripping. Melly Still champions the work imaginatively. Her staging evokes a religious- fundamentalist coastal community, their desperate lives as precarious as the flotsam strewn around a ramshackle jetty (dark brooding designs by Ana Inés Jabares-Pita).The villagers live off the cargo of the ships they deliberately wreck by extinguishing the beam from their lighthouse." Richard Morrison, The Times