Rodula Gaitanou is an Athens-born, Paris-trained, London-based opera director working internationally across Europe, North America and Australasia. Her production of La forza del destino for the Greek National Opera was nominated for Best Production at the 2025 International Opera Awards; she was previously nominated for Director of the Year in 2019.
Her work is shaped directly by the music and rooted in psychological precision, developing clear structures and visual worlds through which character and storytelling unfold.
In the 2025–2026 season, she directs new productions of Roméo et Juliette for State Opera South Australia in Adelaide and Western Australian Opera in Perth, her Canadian debut with Siegfried for Edmonton Opera, Tosca for Opera Hedeland in Denmark, and Death in Venice for Teatro Grande di Brescia in Italy. Revivals include Nabucco at the Savonlinna Opera Festival, Un ballo in maschera at Opera Holland Park, and Madama Butterfly at the Estonian National Opera.
In the 2024–2025 season, she directed new productions of La forza del destino (Greek National Opera), La bohème (Malmö Opera), and The Turn of the Screw (Spoleto Festival USA), alongside revivals of La traviata at the Norwegian National Opera in Oslo and Opera Holland Park in London, and Madama Butterfly at the Estonian National Opera.
Highlights of the 2023–2024 season included new productions of La traviata (Norwegian National Opera), Rusalka (Opéra Royal de Wallonie–Liège), La bohème (Minnesota Opera), Nabucco (Savonlinna Opera Festival), and La fanciulla del West (Opera Hedeland), alongside revivals of La cenerentola in Athens and Madama Butterfly for Rahvusooper Estonia and the Circuito Lombardo theatres in Como, Pavia, Cremona, Bergamo and Lucca.
In the 2022–2023 season, she directed Ariadne auf Naxos for Opera North (touring Leeds, Nottingham, Newcastle and Manchester), Vanessa for the Spoleto Festival USA, Andrea Chénier for Theater St. Gallen, and Madama Butterfly for Fondazione del Teatro Grande di Brescia.
Her wider body of work includes productions for GöteborgsOperan (Il barbiere di Siviglia, Ariadne auf Naxos); Tiroler Festspiele Erl (Le Roi Arthus); Opera Hedeland (Aida, Lucia di Lammermoor); Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (Carmen); Bergen National Opera (La clemenza di Tito); Wexford Festival Opera (Don Quichotte, Vanessa, L’oracolo, Mala vita); Opera Holland Park (Un ballo in maschera, La traviata, The Queen of Spades); Oldenburgisches Staatstheater (Un ballo in maschera); Victorian Opera, Melbourne (Guillaume Tell); Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, Lisbon (Pagliacci); Teatro Verdi di Trieste (La cenerentola); Xi’an Concert Hall, China (Tosca, marking the first staged operatic production in the ancient capital); and the Greek National Opera (Così fan tutte, La cenerentola). Additional work includes productions with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and Scottish Opera (Prokofiev's Betrothal in a Monastery), the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (Le portrait de Manon, Fête galante, I due timidi, Ariane, Alexandre bis, San Giovanni Battista, The Cooper); British Youth Opera (Riders to the Sea, Sāvitri, The Bartered Bride). She made her Royal Opera House debut at the Linbury Studio Theatre directing Haydn’s L’isola disabitata, a production later presented at the inaugural edition of the Hobart Baroque festival in Tasmania.
Rodula is the recipient of the ARGO Award for Arts and Culture (2022), presented to celebrate outstanding Greeks working abroad. Her work has received multiple international nominations, including the CPH Awards in Denmark (for La fanciulla del West and Lucia di Lammermoor), the Irish Times Theatre Awards (for Don Quichotte and Vanessa), and the Helpmann Awards in Australia (Best Director and Best Production, for L’isola disabitata at the Hobart Baroque Festival).
She has directed revivals of Royal Opera House productions internationally, including in London, Sydney, Gothenburg and Valencia. A former Jette Parker Young Artist Director at the Royal Opera House, she trained as a violinist at the Mousikoi Orizontes Conservatory in Athens before studying Musicology at the Sorbonne in Paris, Opera Staging at Paris 8 – Saint-Denis University, and Physical Theatre at the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq.