John Berry was appointed Artistic Director of ENO in November 2005 and is responsible for the artistic programme at ENO. With the Chief Executive, Loretta Tomasi, and more recently Music Director, Edward Gardner, he has played a central role in ENO’s development in the last four years. He has created distinctive and successful seasons with highly acclaimed, bold new productions, and led a significant increase in international partnerships (including the Metropolitan Opera, New York, and opera houses in Munich and Madrid) and exposure for ENO’s work abroad. This success was highlighted in 2009 when ENO won all four available UK opera awards.

John Berry joined ENO in 1995 initially as Casting Director before taking the position of Director of Opera Planning. His dedication to developing young artists’ careers culminated in 1998/99 in the creation of the groundbreaking ENO Young Artists Programme, the first of its kind in the UK. During this period he built close relationships with many leading directors of the day, including Deborah Warner, Phyllida Lloyd, Richard Jones, Peter Sellars and Katie Mitchell.

In the past he has been Artistic Consultant to the Royal College of Music and the Hallé Orchestra and a casting consultant to the BBC and Channel 4; for the latter he cast the highly regarded feature film of John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer. He has been a guest lecturer at music colleges around the world (such as the Royal College of Music, the Royal Academy of Music and Indiana University) and has sat on guest competition panels including the prestigious Metropolitan Opera Guild and Young Concert Artists Trust.

John Berry began his professional life as a musician, studying clarinet at the Royal Northern College of Music and subsequently with Gervase de Peyer in New York. While still in his twenties he moved into artists’ management and became Artists Manager with the leading London agency Harrison Parrott, working closely with artists such as John Adams and percussionist Evelyn Glennie. In 1985 he developed the largest privately run music centres in the UK, with over 600 pupils, based in Cheshire. In 1990, he founded the Brereton International Music Symposium and worked with celebrated singers Birgit Nilsson, Thomas Hampson and Brigitte Fassbaender to build a prestigious annual master-class and concert series which offered leading young professional instrumentalists and singers intensive one-to-one coaching in an environment free from distractions.

John Berry is married and lives in Lewes, East Sussex.