Ian Dearden by his keyboard and computer monitors

Ian Dearden

Sound Designer

Previously for ENO: The Mask of Orpheus, The Mask of Orpheus (Original production)

Career Highlights

Recent opera engagements: Monteverdi’s Orfeo and The Return of Ulysses (ROH at the Roundhouse, 2015/18), Turnage’s Coraline (ROH at the Barbican Theatre, 2018) and Higgins’s The Monstrous Child (ROH at the Linbury, 2019).

With David Sheppard he formed Sound Intermedia in 1996. Together they have created sound designs for Stockhausen’s Helicopter String Quartet (Birmingham Opera Company, 2012), Britten’s Peter Grimes on the Beach (Aldeburgh Productions, 2013), Francesconi’s Quartett (ROH, 2014), Dusapin’s Passion (Music Theatre Wales and London Sinfonietta, 2018), Opera: Passion, Power and Politics (V&A exhibition, 2017), Beyond the Deepening Shadow: The Tower Remembers (Historic Royal Palaces, 2018). They work regularly with the Colin Currie Group performing the work of Steve Reich and have produced two highly acclaimed albums of his music.

Ian Dearden has worked on Birtwistle’s operas Gawain (ROH, 1991), The Second Mrs Kong (Glyndebourne Touring Opera, 1994), The Last Supper (Berlin State Opera, 2000) and was part of the original sound design team for the premiere of The Mask of Orpheus at ENO in 1986.

Last updated: 14th September 2020