Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller,
CBE (born
21 July 1934) is a
British neurologist,
theatre and
opera director, author,
television presenter, humorist and sculptor. He first came to prominence in 1962 when his British comedy stage revue
Beyond the Fringe came to
Broadway. (It was written and performed by
Peter Cook,
Dudley Moore,
Alan Bennett, and himself.) Despite having seen only a few operas and not knowing how to read music, he began stage directing operas in the 1970s and has since become one of the world's leading opera directors with several classic productions to his credit. (Probably best known is his 1982 "Mafia"
Rigoletto, set in
Little Italy.) Along the way he has also become a well known and engaging
television personality and familiar
public intellectual in both the UK and the US.
Miller grew up in St John's Wood, London in a well-connected Jewish family. His father Emanuel (1892-1970) was a psychiatrist specialising in child development and his mother Betty Spiro (1910–1965) was a novelist and biographer. His sister Sarah (d. 2006) worked in television for many years and retained an involvement with Judaism that her brother, an atheist, has always eschewed.
He studied natural sciences and medicine at St John's College, Cambridge (MB BCh, 1959), where he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, before going on to University College London. He qualified as a Doctor of Medicine in 1959 and worked as a hospital doctor for two years.
He was, however, also involved in the university drama society and the Cambridge Footlights and in 1960 he helped write and produce a musical revue, Beyond the Fringe, at the Edinburgh Festival which launched the careers of Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Miller quit the show shortly after its move to Broadway in 1962 and took over as editor and presenter of the BBC's flagship arts programme Monitor. All of these appointments were unsolicited invitations in which Miller was assured that he would "pick it up as he went along". In 1966, he wrote, produced and directed a film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for the BBC, and in 1968 Whistle and I'll Come to You, an adaptation of M. R. James' ghost story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad". By 1970 his reputation was such in the British theatre world that he mounted a West End production of The Merchant of Venice starring Laurence Olivier.
