Simon Butteriss

Writer/director/translator/actor/singer/presenter - Simon Butteriss read English at Cambridge, trained at the RCM Opera School and started his career as an actor in West End plays and musicals and with the RSC, Old Vic Company and at Chichester. He has also made numerous film and television appearances. As a performer, he is perhaps best known in the Gilbert and Sullivan patter roles, which he continues to sing all over the world and he now also pursues a busy career in international opera, singing at La Scala, Milan, with English National Opera and others.

Invited to write and direct by both Raymond Gubbay and Philharmonia Orchestra in 2012, in the following twelve months he directed seven major productions for which he garnered five star reviews in the national press.  He has subsequently regularly written, adapted, translated and directed for stage, screen, radio and concert platform.

“National treasure Simon Butteriss”    BBC Music Magazine, 2024

“Cleverly condensed, rewritten and irresistibly sauced up by multi-talented Simon Butteriss, (Princess Ida) emerges as a blissfully funny romp.  Five stars.”    The Times  2023

"The most memorable piece of art, the one that will stay with me forever, is MAKING MASSINGER by Simon Butteriss.  It is everything that comedy meets revenge tragedy should be - funny and playful, touching and insightful.  Every phrase bestrides the old and the new, and through it we understand better who we are now.”     Helen Birchenough, Chair, Arts Council South West

"The great Simon Butteriss directs with a deft hand.  Peerless" *****     Daily Mail

“Butteriss enhanced every twist of the ludicrous tale with a perfection of verbal wit.”  The Times

"Director Simon Butteriss is my nomination for greatest living Englishman... the audience guffaws and applauds as if each word is new to them...."   Daily Mail

2024 projects include directing DER MIKADO at Passau Opera House, THE GONDOLIERS and THE PIRATES OF PENZANCE at Buxton Opera House and DIE FLEDERMAUS, for which he has also written a dramatized narration, for  IF Opera at Belcombe Court.