Ace McCarron has been a lighting designer for many contemporary opera productions, having worked with Music Theatre Wales since their production of the Philip Glass opera The Fall of the House of Usher in 1988. In 2014, the company premiered his opera The Trial; an adaptation of the Kafka novel. He was also a member of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies’ company The Fires of London, working internationally on his music theatre pieces including The Martyrdom of St Magnus and The Lighthouse. This last opera was also produced by Muziektheater Transparant, and again, Ace was the lighting designer. Ace also lit many productions for the Operastudio in Gent and for Opera de la Monnaie/de Munt in Brussels, recently including Howard Moody’s opera Push, attended by the Royal Family. Ace has also lit a great variety of Baroque operas for companies such as The Scottish Early Music Consort, Opera Magdeburg, The Innsbrucker Festwochen, The New London Consort and The Purcell Quartet. Alongside his work in opera, for many years, Ace was the lighting designer for Howard Barker’s company The Wrestling School, notably lighting his seven-hour epic The Ecstatic Bible for the Adelaide Festival.
Ace also works as a librettist, having won the ‘Flourish’ award in the UK with composer Guy Harries with an adaptation of Marina Lewycka’s novel Two Caravans.