Widely recognised as the leading music-theatre director of his generation in South Africa, Matthew Wild is now increasingly sought-after as a stage director in Europe, where his productions are earning praise for their conceptual intelligence, visual bravura, musicality and “unquestionably brilliant Personenregie" (NZZ). Mr. Wild’s productions have won acclaim in major opera houses in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Sweden, and have been seen on all the important stages of his homeland, where he is a two-time Fleur du Cap Award winner. From 2015 to 2021, he was the Artistic Director of Cape Town Opera.

In the 2023-24 season, Mr Wild will make his debut at Konzert und Theater St Gallen with Larson's Rent and at Oper Frankfurt with Wagner's Tannhäuser. Highlights of the 2022-23 season included new productions of Weill and Brecht’s Die sieben Todsünden and Handel’s Alcina in Cape Town, as well as a revival of his acclaimed production of Humperdinck's Königskinder at the Tiroler Festspiele Erl. In 2022, his critically-lauded staging of Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess for the Theater an der Wien was nominated for four awards at the Österreichische Musiktheaterpreis, including Best Overall Production. COVID-cancelled productions included Verdi's Macbeth for the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, Nono’s Intolleranza 1960, Mendelssohn’s Elias and Wagner’s Parsifal for Konzert Theater Bern, and The Turn of the Screw for Cape Town Opera. 

Mr. Wild made his German debut with an acclaimed production of Katya Kabanova for the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden in 2016, which was revived in 2017-18. Mozart's Don Giovanni and Puccini's La bohèlme followed at Konzert Theater Bern. His many productions for Cape Town Opera include Gluck’s Orphée et Eurydice, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer, Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Cosi fan tutte and Don Giovanni, Richard Strauss’ Salome, Rossini’s Il viaggio a Reims, Puccini’s Suor Angelica, and Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress.
 
Equally accomplished as a director of musicals, Mr. Wild made his musical theatre debut at the Fugard Theatre in 2013 with O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show, a production which smashed box office records over a two year run and won multiple awards. For the same theatre, he has since directed Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret (2015), Bernstein’s West Side Story (2015 – 2018), Styne's Funny Girl (2017) and Cyndi Lauper’s Kinky Boots (2019). His European musical theatre debut followed in the same year with Kander and Ebb’s Chicago for the Staatstheater Braunschweig.
 
Before he made his opera directing debut in Sweden in 2009 with Boesmans’ Julie for NorrlandsOperan and Malmö Opera, Mr Wild studied Drama and English at the University of Cape Town, worked professionally as an actor and playwright, and worked as a director of spoken theatre, ranging from new plays to Shakespearean comedy.

​

​