The English theatre and opera director and librettist David Pountney (1947) was born in Oxford and educated at St. John's College, Cambridge. As Director of Productions at the English National Opera (1983 – 1993) he directed more than twenty operas, including Doktor Faust, Rusalka, Hänsel und Gretel, The Fairy Queen and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.He was intendant at the Bregenzer Festspiele until 2013, when he was appointed chief executive and artistic director of the Welsh National Opera. Pountney has directed more than ten world premieres, including The Passenger and three operas by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies for which he also wrote the librettos. Pountney has translated many operas from Russian, Czech, German and Italian into English. In 2013 he directed three new productions, all three operas by Philip Glass: Satyagraha in Rotterdam, The Voyage at the Metropolitan Opera in New York and Die Spuren der Verirrten in Linz. David Pountney was also the director on a new production of Mozart's Die Zauberflöte, which was performed in 2013 on the floating stage on Lake Constance at the Bregenzer Festspiele and will be reprised there this summer.