Gary Briggle

Gary Briggle, Stage Director, is a nationally-renowned expert in the “Savoy Operas” of Gilbert & Sullivan. Inspired to become a singer-actor by these enduring works while a mere teenager, Gary has performed and directed 15 productions of The Pirates of Penzance alone, appearing as the Major General in a dozen of them! His endearing and hilarious Koko in The Mikado, with Skylight Opera Theater in Milwaukee, was featured on PBS-TV.

Gary studied the traditional style of these classic works with John Reed, O.B.E., star of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company, and was chosen by Mr. Reed to play Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard with Seaside Music Theater. His repertoire also includes witty, energetic stagings of H.M.S. Pinafore (in which he often appears as Sir Joseph Porter), The Duke of Plaza-Toro in  The Gondoliers, Lord Tolloller in Iolanthe and Bunthorne in Patience, for which he recieved the esteemed Carbonell Award for Best Actor and Best Production.

He has brought comic operas, including those by Offenbach and J. Strauss, to vivid life for The Arizona Theatre Company, Virginia Opera, Dayton Opera, Sacramento Opera, Anchorage Opera, Nevada Opera, Opera Carolina, Lyric Opera Cleveland, Fargo-Moorhead Opera, Skylark Opera, The University of Iowa, and Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory, among others. Gary recently directed Peter Brook’s The Tragedy of Carmen and tackles Sondheim’s Into the Woods next month.