Thomas de Mallet Burgess is a UK theatre and opera director whose work has taken him all over the world. For the past five years, he has been general director of New Zealand Opera, leading the company through Covid, upheaval and regrowth. He is leaving after the Auckland season of NZO’s current tour of Mozart’s Così Fan Tutte to become artistic director of the Finnish National Opera.
Your name is rather ornate. What is your whakapapa?
I was born in beautiful Barnstaple, in North Devon, where my father’s family have lived for at least 400 years, and my mother grew up in London. We also have connections with Wales and France. Science enables us to go much further back, with the largest concentration of
