Kirsten Z. Cairns, Stage Director

Director Kirsten Z Cairns is equally at home creating productions in traditional performance spaces, and exploring site-specific projects in a variety of venues. She is Artistic Director and Founder of Enigma Chamber Opera, established at the end of 2019. Their debut production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw was hailed in the Boston Globe as ‘an auspicious arrival in the Boston arts landscape’; their Curlew River was described by reviewers as ‘expertly rendered’, ‘fabulously done’ and ‘a transcendent experience’. 

Cairns has staged works throughout the US and in the UK; as Resident Stage Director for Intermezzo: The New England Chamber Opera Series, her productions included three world premieres. Her work has been described in the press as ‘so good you want to see it again, right away’ and ‘astounding, phenomenal, superb’. Before going freelance, Cairns was Director of Opera Studies at the Boston Conservatory, where she staged many productions of opera and theatre, as well as spearheading their very popular children’s opera series.

Her further directing projects include work for The Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam, UMKC’s Conservatory, Longy School of Music, Dartmouth University’s Glee Club, Opera del West, Opera North, Trinity Church Boston, the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard, Nonsense Room Productions, and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. She is currently working with a team developing a new, off Broadway show.

With degrees from the University of Durham, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and New England Conservatory, Cairns is a qualified instructor of drama and literature, and a trained singer. She has lectured for groups such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Duke University, MIT, and Boston Lyric Opera. She also performs for the Council for Music in Hospitals and Care, Scotland, specializing in giving concerts for dementia sufferers.