“Every artistic work is a work of the soul, and regardless of how a script or a libretto is written, it is my task as a director to bring out the truth and the core of each work, with the spirit of all who are a part of each project. Every production is a product of all that realise it.”

Heather Tan

Born in Singapore in 1996 into a non-artistic family, Heather Tan found her way into opera and music theatre through a deep early connection to music, beginning with piano and classical singing. Her formative years in the TKGS and NJC choirs, where she served as both conductor and president, nurtured not only her musical instincts, but also a lasting belief in the power of collective artistic work: people gathering, listening, building something together, and making space for one another’s voices.

Heather is the first Singaporean to pursue specialist training in opera stage direction. She studied Musiktheaterregie at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, Austria, where she worked under and learned from renowned directors including Beverly Blankenship, Michael Sturminger and Helen Malkowsky. Her artistic development has also been shaped by assisting, observing and working across a broad range of European production environments, including at Schlosstheater Schönbrunn, Neue Oper Wien and the Vienna State Opera, where she was involved in Calixto Bieito’s production of Tristan und Isolde.

Since 2017, Heather has worked actively in stage direction, assisting and creative development; since 2020, her practice has also expanded into filmic and interdisciplinary work. Beginning at the age of 21, she has directed a wide range of opera, music theatre and vocal repertoire, including Die Zauberflöte, La Cenerentola, La Bohème, Don Pasquale, Carmen, Le nozze di Figaro, Window Shopping, Pagliacci, Don Giovanni, Jeffrey Ching’s The Butterflies, Handel’s Messiah, and staged song cycles including Schwanengesang, Wesendonck Lieder, Das Buch der hängenden Gärten and 20 Songs of the Greek People. Her work also includes several self-created pastiche and interdisciplinary projects.

Her productions have been presented in Singapore, China, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Belgium and Greece, across festivals, theatres, concert venues and unconventional locations. Working between European and Southeast Asian cultural contexts, Heather is interested in opera as a living form: one that can honour its history while remaining porous, immediate and meaningful to the worlds in which it is performed.

She is the founder of Opera Asia, now Opera Asia Pacific: a platform created to build a stronger cultural identity for opera across Asia and the Pacific, while supporting artistic exchange, talent development and sustainable regional collaboration. For Heather, culture is not merely a backdrop to artistic work; it is one of the forces that shapes how art is made, understood and received. Opera Asia Pacific grows from the belief that the region’s diverse histories, languages, traditions and contemporary realities should not simply be represented within opera, but should actively influence its future.

Having not grown up within opera as an inherited cultural tradition, Heather approaches the genre with both affection and productive distance. This position has led her to continually question what opera is, whom it belongs to, and what it can become when it encounters other cultures, artistic languages and ways of storytelling. Rather than seeing this distance as a limitation, she regards it as a source of curiosity: an invitation to confront the nature of the genre itself and to imagine what the wider world can bring to it.

Her artistic perspective is rooted in people, culture and emotional truth. She is drawn to untaken or overlooked perspectives, and to stories that remain natural, human and close to the heart. For Heather, directing is an act of translation, not a means of simplifying the world, but of helping audiences feel its complexity, contradictions, tenderness and urgency. She sees herself simply as a translator: translating music into lived experience, cultural difference into encounter, and inner lives into images and moments that can be shared.

Heather is currently attached to Staatstheater Augsburg as Artistic Project Manager and International Relations, while serving as Director of Opera Asia Pacific and working internationally as a freelance stage director and producer.

Languages: English, German, Chinese, basic Italian, basic Slovene, basic Melayu