Dionysios Kyropoulos Resume

      Dionysios is a Professor of Historical Stagecraft at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, teaching period acting, rhetorical delivery and gesture at the Vocal Studies and Historical Performance Departments.

He started his classical singing studies at the Philippos Nakas Conservatoire in Athens and his acting studies at the Theatre of Changes drama school, before reading music at City, University of London, with performance tuition at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama with Robert Dean. He studied opera performance at the City Opera course at City Lit and the Morley Opera School, and performed with the British Youth Opera. He graduated with an MPhil in Music Studies from Clare College, University of Cambridge, and he worked as visiting research fellow at Houghton Library, Harvard University. He is currently finishing his DPhil in Music at New College, University of Oxford, researching historical acting and rhetoric, and teaching academic tutorials on eighteenth-century opera.

In 2012 he was offered the directorship of the Opera Ensemble at City, University of London, where he gave undergraduate music students theoretical and practical training in operatic performance. In the summers of 2013, 2014 and 2015 he worked as a tutor of historical stagecraft at the Baroque Opera Studio, University of Burgos, Spain. In 2014 he founded Theatron Novum, a student theatre and opera production company at the University of Oxford, offering acting training to young performers and experimenting with the revival of period acting. He has also worked as historical movement coach for the International Rameau Summer School in London in September 2015 and August 2016, and taught Baroque gesture at Benslow Music in Hitchin in April 2016, March 2017 and November 2017.

As a performer Dionysios has sung in 161 shows (participating in 46 opera productions and singing 23 principal roles), which allowed him to acquire an intimate understanding of the technical and emotional challenges performers face, becoming an effective teacher. His directing career has also given him extensive experience in working with performers of any age and level. He has directed twenty theatre and opera productions in the UK and abroad, ranging from an opera with 40 children performers aged 5 to 13 (Ulysses and the Wooden Horse, 2015) to a pastiche with top-level professionals that have previously sung at the Royal Opera House (Casanova's Conquest, 2016), and from a play with eight actors in a small studio theatre (The Doctor in Spite of Himself, 2015) to a large dramatic opera with a company of 60 actors, singers, dancers and acrobats at the Oxford Playhouse (The Fairy Queen, 2016).

Dionysios is fascinated by the enormous power historical concepts of rhetorical delivery can offer to business leaders in today's corporate world and the profound effect they can have on marketing. In August 2017 he taught oratorical techniques to an EMBA class at the Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and he has since developed a keen interest in exploring in greater depth the ways in which his research could also be applicable to business. He is the founder and programme director of the Oxford Academic Advancement Centre, an educational company offering bespoke academic and cultural study-abroad programmes in Oxford. He has taught academic tutorials at Christ Church College, University of Oxford, and he is a tutor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama's Department of Academic Studies.

Dionysios is a member of Equity with full public liability insurance, and holds the EduCare Child Protection in Education Level 2 certificate. He offers private acting coaching for opera singers and actors, and he runs historical acting workshops and audition clinics. For more information please get in touch.
Updated:  February 17, 2020

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