1982. Portuguese stage director and designer. Holds degrees in Stage Direction and Acting from the School of Music and Performing Arts (ESMAE-IPP, Porto). He has also completed the Opera Stage Directing Course from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation under Christian Gangneron and the Visual Arts Secondary Course in the arts school of Soares dos Reis.
He has an award-winning career as a director, set designer and costume designer and an extensive teaching career in subjects related to theatre, music, musicals and opera, in Portugal, England, France, Denmark, Austria, and Italy. From 2004 to 2011 he worked with the international award-winning company Teatro de Marionetas do Porto as costume designer, graphic designer and assistant director for João Paulo Seara Cardoso. It was with João Paulo that he worked on his first venture into the opera realm in Encantos de Medeia by António José da Silva and he owes him the incentive to pursue a career in the staging of multidisciplinary performances. Since then, he has been directing productions ranging from opera to theatre, from musicals to site-specific works among a myriad of Portuguese and international authors. He joined the Royal Opera House young artists programme in 2011, where he directed several shows, receiving excellent reviews from the English press. The Times Newspaper appraises his production of Montsalvagte’s El Gato con Botas “From first note to last it’s a riot of puppetry. Ribeiro is careful to tell the story deftly and clearly. Children will be mesmerised but so will adults.”; or the international magazine Bachtrack about his directing début with Berlioz’s song cycle Les Nuits d’été: “Ribeiro succeeded in impressing upon his audience the beauty and pain of death, life and love”.
He assisted some of the world’s leading stage directors like Robert Carsen, Laurent Pelly, Kasper Holten, Danielle Abbado, John Copley, John Fuljames, and Jonathan Kent. He had the opportunity to work with Ambrogio Maestri, Angela Gheorghiu, Bryan Hymel, Charles Castronovo, Daniela Barcellona, Ermonela Jaho, Erwin Schrott, Jonas Kaufmann, Juan Diego Flórez, Krassimira Stoyanova, Leo Nucci, Lisette Oropesa, Liudmyla Monastyrska, Michael Spyres, Patrizia Ciofi, Placido Domingo, Roberto Alagna, Simon Keenlyside, Piotr Beczala, Vittorio Grigolo, among many others. Currently, he works for the ROH as a freelance stage director for new productions and revivals. Between 2012 and 2017 he was an assessor for the Off West End Awards, nominating shows and artists for the OFFIES.
For the European Network of Opera Academies ENOA, he staged at Gulbenkian Foundation a lab for a new opera “Outra Margem” (Nuno da Rocha / Rita Fernandes); was the guest director for the residency “Landscape of new music theatre and opera – New Staging Languages”, LOD (Gent) / Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels) and participated in the 3D Mapping for Opera course at the Verona Opera Academy, Italy.
His directing credits, which often feature his designs, include: An Account Of The State Of That Place winning project of the TW Puppetry Festival; The Passion, J.S.Bach; Goldilocks & The Three Pigs for The Opera Story Company; the musicals A Caminho & Little Shop of Horros; La Cambiale di Matrimonio & Elisir d’Amore for All’Opera Company; António Marinheiro, Fear & Misery in the Fall of Democracy & Gladiators for CT4V; The Phantom of the Opera & Sound of Music Concert Stagings at the Porto Coliseum and Campo Pequeno; the operas L’Enfant et les Sortilèges & Domitila; and for the Royal Opera House worked for the revivals of Rigoletto, Falstaff, Nabucco, Barbiere di Siviglia, Manon Lescaut, Carmen and was the revival director for two revivals of La Traviata with Aleksandra Kurzak and Lisette Oropesa in the title role.