Dublin Based Internationally Renown Opera/Theater/Film Director, ERIC FRAAD Founder/CEO of Heresy Records, Leads on Music and Vision - A New Electronic News Letter

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ERIC FRAAD: DIRECTOR - BIOGRAPHY

Eric Fraad is known on both sides of the Atlantic as a director of opera, theatre and film. He is also recognized as an innovative artistic director, producer and cultural entrepreneur having founded and led ground-breaking arts organisations in Europe and America.

He has directed ten short films and music videos for classical ensembles and popular music groups including the London-based early music ensemble, Atalante, the Dublin-based early music ensemble, eX, the New York pop group, Baby Raptors and the New York funk/rock band Miss Velvet & The Blue Wolf. In May 2021 he will direct a full-length film titled The Red Book of Ossory based on the famous witch hunt of Dame Alice Kyteler in 1324.

Mr. Fraad is the founder and artistic director of Heresy Records, an innovative record label that specializes in early music, traditional and world music, contemporary classical and experimental crossovers between classical and popular genres. Heresy’s recording of The Wexford Carols reached #1 on the Billboard and Amazon charts.

In 2013 he co-founded the company META with Irish composer Roger Doyle. META’s production of Doyle’s electronic opera Heresy, directed by Mr. Fraad, was performed at the Project Art Centre, the Kilkenny Arts Festival, Mermaid Theatre and Dublin Theatre Festival.

As co-Artsitic Director of eX, the Irish-based early music performance company he founded with singer Caitri´ona O’Leary, he conceived, directed and produced critically acclaimed works for the stage including: Possessed, commissioned by The Galway Early Music Festival; the Irish tour of Shipwrecked culminating at the Belfast Festival at Queens; Christ Lag in Todesbanden, a controversial staging of Bach’s first cantata, at the Regensburg Early Music Festival – Toccata magazine called the production “a sensation”; Motion of the Heart, a neo-baroque masque at the National Gallery of Ireland; Songs from a Gothic Room, with renowned medievalist Pedro Memelsdorff at the National Gallery of Ireland; The Rape of the Lock, a baroque spectacle with music director Christopher Hogwood at Smock Alley Theatre; BAROCK, with Konrad Jungha¨nel staged at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Reliquiae Romanae, an elaborate production of Italian cantatas at the Southbank Centre in London, among others.

In the United States he has worked on the directing staff of San Francisco Opera, San Diego Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Central City Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Provocative productions of Puccini’s Tosca at Los Angeles Opera and Verdi’s Rigoletto at Pennsylvania Opera Theatre received major international media attention.

He spent two years at the English National Opera assisting the Director of Productions, Colin Graham and has worked at the Old Vic (London), Ope´ra National de Belgique, Opera North (Leeds), etc. His works for the stage have been seen at theatres and festivals across Ireland.

In 1984 he founded Opera at the Academy in New York City. The company was the most experimental, exciting and critically acclaimed opera organization in New York of the 1980’s and early 1990’s. During these years he was a prote´ge´ of the American impresario Joseph Papp, directing and producing numerous operas in association with The Public Theater. Andy Warhol filmed his production of The Magic Flute which was subsequently broadcast it on MTV.

In 1993 he founded Millennial Arts Productions for which he was Artistic Director. The company produced works for Broadway, off Broadway, film and large-scale productions of his theatre works. His staging of Handel’s Messiah with costumes by Hussein Chalayan created a stir in New York and at the Utrecht Early Music Festival. Esther, praised by New York Magazine as “a miraculous marriage of Handel and Racine”, featured the debut of counter tenor Bejun Mehta. Other creations performed in New York include Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, and Carissimi’s Jeptha (both with Derrek Lee Ragin), Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, Bach’s cantata, Ein Feste Burg ist User Gott, etc.

Between 2001 and 2004 Mr. Fraad served as Director (Artistic Director/CEO) of The Ark in Dublin, His theatre productions for The Ark toured the country and won several awards and nominations including one for Best Production at the Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards for his staging of Jocelyn Clarke’s adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Day I Swapped My Dad for 2 Goldfish. At The Ark he commissioned and directed new works for the stage including plays with Booker Prize winners John Banville and Roddy Doyle.

He studied English Literature and music composition at Bard College with additional studies at UCLA Film School, Eastman School of Music and the University of the Pacific and holds an MBA from Columbia Business School (Columbia University).