Margaret Walker is a freelance language coach, teacher, dramaturge and director specialising in empowering creative professionals through language. Whether you are a singer who needs language coaching for role preparation or a conductor who needs to learn how to take a rehearsal in German, Italian or French, Margaret will thoroughly prepare you in tailor-made one-to-one online lessons. Now living on an organic farm in the south-west of France, she also offers her students the chance to do intensive, residential, in-person courses in the inspiring surroundings of the French Pyrenees. 

Until recently, Margaret was a Staff Director at the German National Theater in Weimar, Germany, having used her background in music and languages to successfully pivot into directing. This decision was solidified during her Hospitanz on Lydia Steier’s production of Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden with the Berliner Philharmoniker.

She studied Modern and Medieval Languages (Italian and French) at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she was a Choral Scholar under Stephen Layton and appeared as a soloist on a Grammy-nominated recording. She completed her vocal studies at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, during which time she maintained a busy schedule performing core works by Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn in many of the UK’s cathedrals and concert halls. Career highlights included performing regularly as a soloist with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, singing the role of Maria Bertram in the Scottish premiere of Jonathan Dove’s Mansfield Park, and covering the role of Popova in Walton’s The Bear with the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester.

Margaret’s background in both performance and languages gives her a unique skillset in the rehearsal room, allowing her to work effectively with singers and anticipate their needs, as she is able to conceive staging from the performer’s perspective.

During her time in Weimar, she assisted Barbora Horáková Joly, Hasko Weber, and Dirk Schmeding, and staged a Singspiel adaptation of Le petit prince on the main stage. She also assisted Côme de Bellescize with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Marion Cotillard, translating from French into German and leading rehearsals with the Berliner Vokalhelden.