Hall, Peter (Reginald Frederick) (1930– )

English theatre, opera, and film director. He was director of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon 1960–68 and developed the Royal Shakespeare Company 1968–73 until appointed director of the National Theatre 1973–88, succeeding Laurence Olivier. He founded the Peter Hall Company in 1988.

Hall's stage productions include Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1955), The Wars of the Roses (1963), Harold Pinter's The Homecoming (stage 1967 and film 1973), The Oresteia (1981), and Tennessee Williams's Orpheus Descending (1988). He has directed operas at Covent Garden, London; Bayreuth, Germany; and New York, and in 1984 was appointed artistic director of opera at Glyndebourne, England, with productions of Carmen (1985) and Albert Herring (1985–86). He established a new repertory company based at the Old Vic Theatre, London, in 1996. In the same year, he directed Carmen in New York and The Oedipus Plays in London. He was knighted in 1977.