English designer William Dudley made his Royal Opera debut in 1980 designing sets for Les Contes d’Hoffmann, directed by John Schlesinger. He has since designed sets for Don Giovanni, directed by Peter Wood, and Der Rosenkavalier, directed by Schlesinger, and sets and costumes for The Cunning Little Vixen, directed by Bill Bryden.

Dudley was born in London and studied at Central Saint Martins and the Slade School of Art. His opera designs include The Silver Tassie (English National Opera), Il barbiere di Siviglia (Glyndebourne Festival and Welsh National Opera), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Glyndebourne Festival), Idomeneo, Der fliegende Holländer and Anna Christie (WNO), Billy Budd (Metropolitan Opera, New York), Lucia di Lammermoor (Lyric Opera of Chicago and Paris Opéra) and Der Ring des Nibelungen (Bayreuth Festival). Dudley works extensively in theatre, his many productions for the National Theatre including The Mysteries, Coast of Utopia and The Rise and Fall of Little Voice. His theatre credits elsewhere include Hamlet, Kafka’s Dick and Hitchcock Blonde (Royal Court), Julius Caesar, Twelfth Night and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Royal Shakespeare Company), Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s Globe) and The End of the Rainbow, All My Sons, Woman in White and The Importance of Being Earnest (West End).

Dudley’s many awards include Olivier and SWET Awards for Hitchcock Blonde, The Mysteries, Undiscovered Country, All My Sons, The Critic and The Merry Wives of Windsor, a BAFTA for Persuasion and the Molière Award for Visual Creation for The Dance of the Vampires.