Iwan Davies MA, MMus, ATCL, ALCM

Iwan Davies trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and the National Opera Studio in London, where he participated in a variety of performances in collaboration with Opera North, Scottish Opera and Welsh National Opera. He was a staff conductor at the Salzburger Landestheater, where he conducted the Mozarteum Orchester in performances of La Gazzetta (Rossini), The Trial (Glass), Wiener Blut (Strauss), and My Fair Lady. He is Head of Music at the Buxton International Festival, where he has conducted productions of Cendrillon (Viardot) and Viva la Diva (Donizetti). For English Touring Opera, he conducted La bohème and The Golden Cockerel (Rimsky-Korsakov), and for OPRA Cymru the world premiere of Gareth Glyn’s Welsh-language opera, Wythnos yng Nghymru Fydd, Beethoven’s Fidelio, and Glyn’s second opera, Un Nos Ola Leuad, with the orchestra of Welsh National Opera, which is currently being made into a film. A champion of Welsh music, he is Director of Music at Aberystwyth University, and has commissioned and performed new works from Claire Victoria Roberts, Pwyll ap Siôn, Gareth Olubunmi Hughes, Hana Lili, Jefferson Lobo, David Roche, Sarah-Lianne Lewis and Mared Emlyn. Future plans include the world premiere of a new operetta using the music of Ivor Novello, The Land of Might-Have-Been, at Buxton, and a new production of Così fan tutte with OPRA Cymru

Currently a PhD student at Bangor University, researching Welsh opera since the formation of Welsh National Opera.