Ian David Campbell (21 December 1945 (1945-12-21) (age 79)) is an Australian-born opera singer, stage director, administrator, radio broadcaster and writer.
In March 2014 he told the San Diego Opera's board of directors that the company should shut down, saying its finances made continued operation no longer viable.
Among the operas he programmed in Adelaide were the Australian premieres of Tippett's Midsummer Marriage, Britten's Death in Venice, Musgrave's A Christmas Carol and Janacek's The Makropulos Case.
In San Diego he introduced a recital and concert series in 1986 which included Renata Scotto, Kiri Te Kanawa, Hans Peter Blochwitz, Cecilia Bartoli, Joan Sutherland, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Jose Carreras, Tatiana Troyanos, Luciano Pavarotti, Hermann Prey, Placido Domingo, Ewa Podles, Galina Gorchakova, Simon Estes and Paata Burchuladze, among others.
[4] His North American Voices Project launched in 1994 included Daniel Catan's Rappaccini's Daughter, the first opera by a Mexican composer to be performed in the United States, Carlisle Floyd's The Passion of Jonathan Wade, Of Mice and Men and Cold Sassy Tree, the world premiere of Myron Fink's The Conquistador, Andre Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire, Thérèse Raquin by Tobias Picker, Samuel Barber's Vanessa and Jake Heggie's Moby Dick.
For San Diego Opera he has staged Falstaff (1999), Il trovatore (2000), Tosca (2002), Katya Kabanova (2004) with Patricia Racette, La traviata (2004) with Anja Harteros singing her first Violetta, La bohème (2005) with Richard Leech, Don Quichotte (2009) with Ferruccio Furlanetto and Denyce Graves, and Murder in the Cathedral (2013) with Furlanetto.
In March 2014 he proposed to the board of directors that San Diego Opera should be dissolved at the conclusion of its 2014 season in April, citing a decrease in attendance and in major donations.
[9] For three summers he was a member of the faculty for Martina Arroyo's young artist program, Prelude to Performance in New York, directing La bohème (2016), Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi (2017) and Falstaff (2018).