It’s a scenario many older siblings might dread; after years of being big brother, finding yourself on the receiving end of being told what to do — by your younger brother. But this isn’t a story about childhood rivalries – it is far, far more dramatic. This is opera.
Well, it is really life and opera. Specifically, a full-scale production where the little brother is the director and the big brother is the singer taking his cues.
Meet Sam and Jack Furness: a pair of brothers whose lives have been in tandem from singing children to having kids of their own, and each with a distinct career in the world of opera.
As The Queen of Spades continues its run at Garsington Opera, one of Britain’s most prestigious summer festivals, audiences have a rare chance to see both Sam and Jack Furness in the programme. It is the latest chapter in a creative conversation that began in Llandaff Cathedral choir stalls. Judging by family photos the love of theatre started even before that.
Jack in Queen of Spades reherasals at Garsington
The brothers, born and raised in Cardiff, are now well-known figures in the opera scene: Sam as a tenor, and Jack as a daring director. This summer, they have joined forces for a major new production of the Tchaikovsky opera at Garsington — Sam in the role of Chekalinsky, and Jack at the helm as director. Though it’s not their first collaboration, it’s their most high-profile to date.
That story begins at the Cathedral School, Llandaff where both were educated. Here they were both choristers from the age of eight until thirteen.
“That’s really where it all started,” Sam recalls. “Then we were at Cambridge together, where you could put on full-scale opera productions — which is amazing, really. I’d already decided at 15 that I wanted to be an opera singer thanks to a school matinée of La bohème at Welsh National Opera. And Jack has always copied everything I’ve done in life, so he decided to direct!”
At Cambridge Sam read theology, and was a choral scholar at St John’s College. Jack read music, also at Cambridge. Sam and Jack overlapped at Cambridge for two years — Sam from 2006 to 2009, Jack from 2007 to 2010.
Jack offers a more diplomatic version, “Sam and I have been making music together really for our whole lives, since being choristers at Llandaff, which we both started when we were eight years old. In fact I think we were featured in The Western Mail when our younger brother Rob joined the choir too. Since then we’ve been in plays, musicals, choirs, orchestras, as well as cutting our operatic teeth together. Over the past ten years or so we’ve both been on our own journeys with our work but we’re always in touch and try to see as much of each other’s stuff as possible. Sam will say that I copied him which is not something I can agree to in print. I like to think we’ve developed together.
Llandaff choristers
“Sam and I did some of our earliest stuff together including a particularly memorable Magic Flute at Rosslyn Chapel near Edinburgh, with the company I set up, Shadwell Opera. It has been an amazing adventure of thinking about what opera can be, and trying to put that into practice. In the early years we performed classic rep in English in interesting spaces. The best example of this was The Magic Flute at Rosslyn Chapel as part of the Edinburgh Fringe, in a translation by the late Kit Hesketh Harvey, a very funny and hugely kind man. Sam played Tamino and we won a Herald Angel Award! That was the second show I ever directed and really set me off on the directing bug.” After Cambridge, Sam went on to train at the Royal Academy of Music in London
“After that Shadwell evolved, and from 2014 we explored contemporary opera, including a memorable family performance of Oliver Knussen’s magical opera Where the Wild Things Are. I now run the company with the conductor Finnegan Downie Dear, one of the outstanding musicians of our generation. More recently we’ve turned our hand to commissioning new opera, and last summer we gave the world premiere of Isabella Gellis’ opera The Devil’s Den.
“Sam has been a big part of it since the beginning, playing Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Albert Herring. Also, more recently, we gave a staged production of Janacek’s song-cycle The Diary of One Who Disappeared. But this is the first thing for a while. The only other fully professional gig we did together was Trial by Jury at Alexandra Palace Theatre as part of the Proms in 2018.”
Sam adds, “Shadwell was an amazing experience, to be able to do a number of fully staged productions before I even got to music college. That put me ahead of my contemporaries in terms of experience. We also had a totally brilliant time, winning an award at the 2009 Edinburgh Fringe and putting together some unbelievable shows on no budget.
“What’s amazing about Shadwell is how young the audience always is. It’s always a really young crowd which is really at the heart of what Shadwell is trying to do – get people who haven’t been to an opera through the doors! Lots of companies say they want that but in my experience few do it as well as Shadwell.”
Despite that shared past, The Queen of Spades marks their first full-scale professional opera together. And while their working relationship is deeply collaborative, they’re careful to maintain the right balance. “I try to buy into the director’s vision as much as possible,” says Sam. “Obviously when it’s Jack, I feel closer to the production. I just want him to succeed, and thankfully he has! I’ve tried to tone down the brotherly banter — though sometimes I accidentally slip back into big brother mode. But he’s definitely the boss in rehearsals.”
Jack agrees, “Working with Sam felt like the most natural thing in the world. We used to do a lot of dressing up as kids, and we haven’t stopped. I actually felt hugely grateful every day that Sam was there. In a funny way I was able to be more myself with him around compared to a normal process. He was a massive team player on this show, and I felt we were able to help each other understand this amazingly complex piece. Sam and I have shared this kind of relationship for a long time, pushing each other to be the best we can be, and feeding back on each other’s work. I think that trust is a very powerful thing in the rehearsal room.”
That complex piece is Tchaikovsky’s psychologically rich and musically intricate opera based on Pushkin’s tale of obsession, fate, and madness. “I think The Queen of Spades is about the terrifying power of stories to change our reality,” says Jack, reflecting on his thematic approach. It’s about how narrative shapes identity, and how belief can become delusion.”
Sam’s role in the opera has given him plenty to explore and makes quite an impact in the dark Tchaikovsky tale set in the tsarist capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, during the reign of Catherine the Great. “This is my seventh role at Garsington so it’s somewhere I feel very comfortable with the company and the audience. It’s a beautiful place to work and the new studios are amazing. The role isn’t the most vocally interesting (no real money notes) but with Jack I have created an interesting track for the character which I think has brought him to life nicely.”
The Queen of Spades also marked a return to Garsington for Jack who enjoyed great success in 2022 with Dvořák’s Rusalka, which had Welsh soprano Natalya Romaniw in the title role. The production had been delayed for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The show, which contains the famous Song to the Moon aria, went on to open the Edinburgh Festival’s opera programme.
Away from the rehearsal room, the brothers’ lives have taken different but equally busy paths. Sam, aged 38, lives in the Kentish countryside with his wife Laura — whom he married in 2013 — and their three young sons: Flynn, Ted, and Gryff, all under six. “We’ve got a black lab, multiple cats and chickens. It’s a proper family setup.”
Jack, now 37, lives in Cardiff, with his wife set and costume designer Hannah Wolfe whom he married in Pembrokeshire in 2018. The couple, who also sometimes work together artistically, have two sons, Noah and Emrys, both under four. “When I’m not working, you’ll find me wandering Roath Park, eating ill-advised ice cream. I read, walk, write, watch football. I go to Cardiff City games with my dad. I am also a very big fan of our siblings Rob and Polly! Our parents are still in Cardiff; we moved back here during the pandemic. I love living in this amazing city. I don’t plan on leaving!”
Sam and Jack
While both Sam and Jack are embedded in the world of opera, theirs was not a particularly musical upbringing. “Our parents (Jonathan and Anne) are both lawyers,” says Jack. “They’re not a musical family. But our mum’s dad had a beautiful voice, and our dad’s mum was very involved with amateur dramatics, so maybe it’s the combo.” Sam claims his father is actually tone deaf. The Furness siblings — Sam, Jack, Rob, and Polly — all sang as choristers growing up.
Closer to home April 2026 will see Jack making his directorial debut with WNO, directing Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman. “I saw my first operas at WNO, so it feels very special to be making a show for my home company. WNO is an outstanding company that should be protected. The idea that as a society we have to choose between that, a small music venue, or touring theatre company reflects an austerity mindset and should be refuted. WNO has a huge amount to offer. Protect WNO. Fund the arts.”
Before Jack’s WNO debut other projects are taking him in different direction, “I’m really looking forward to directing Dutchman at WNO next year, as well as Gerald Barry’s amazing opera The Importance of Being Earnest – not sure I can say where yet.” Premiering in London in 2013, the Gerald Barry opera was dubbed a comedy masterpiece. Also on the near horizon is his directing Ambroise Thomas’ Hamlet for the Buxton International Festival, opening 7 July and running until 18 July.
Jack and Hannah worked together on Mozart’s Il re pastore, at the Buxton International Festival, in 2023. The production included video landscapes of the Welsh countryside, and this may prove a hint for the 2026 Dutchman with Wales’ rugged coastline.
“I’m also currently working on writing a Spatial Audio codebreaking adventure based on the life of James Tilly Matthews, the first ever fully documented case of schizophrenia.” The merchant of Welsh and Huguenot descent, was committed to Bethlem Royal Hospital in 1797 after experiencing politically charged delusions—most notably his belief that spies were using a mysterious “air loom” to torment him remotely, which led him to disrupt sessions of the House of Commons and were later chronicled in the 1810 book Illustrations of Madness, making him now regarded by historians as the first fully documented case of schizophrenia. “I was very grateful to receive funding from Immersive UK through the Wales Millennium Centre to develop that idea. I’d love to diversify my work and direct some plays and short films too.”
Sam’s many-plumed cap roles at Garsington, includes Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Flamand in Strauss’s Capriccio. Last year the summer festivals saw him add the role of Nero to his repertoire in Monteverde’s L’incoronazione di Poppea at Grange Festival Opera. Other roles have included debuts at the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and houses and festivals such as in Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Spain. In spring 2026, he travels back to Madrid to sing Lysander in a new Deborah Warner production of Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Teatro Real, Madrid, in March 2026. This is a co-production with the Royal Ballet and Opera and the Teatro Maggio Musicale in Florence.
Although no stranger to English audiences and Scottish Opera audiences Sam is yet to work with Welsh National Opera, although appearing at Wales Millennium Centre in a touring Pirates of Penzance in 2013. “Sore point! No! Am still waiting for WNO to call. Think they must have the wrong number!”
The Queen of Spades runs until July 4, 2025. https://garsingtonopera.org/whats-on/the-queen-of-spades/
The Flying Dutchman opens at Wales Millennium Centre on April 16, 2026. https://wno.org.uk/whats-on/dutchman
Shadwell Opera https://www.shadwell.org.uk/
Hamlet opens at the Buxton International Festival on July 12. https://buxtonfestival.co.uk/whats-on/hamlet
Garsington images by Julian Guidera
