Dean Burry was born in St. John's, Newfoundland in 1972, but grew up in the town of Gander. In 1998, while working as an educator with the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, he was commissioned to write The Brothers Grimm. The opera has been seen by over 120,000 children across North America since 2001 and has been produced in Toronto, Ottawa, Saskatoon, Calgary, Edmonton and Nashville. The Brothers Grimm is believed to be the most performed Canadian opera ever.
Other major works include Under the Night, The Heart That Knows and Home and Away for Live Bait Theatre, Songs of the Island for the Charlottetown Festival, The Hobbit for the Canadian Children’s Opera Company and Sarasota Opera, Isis and the Seven Scorpions for the Canadian Opera Company, Pandora’s Locker for The Glenn Gould School and A Creature of Habit for Rising Tide Theatre.
The 2009/2010 season saw five new premieres with The Mummers’ Masque for Toronto Masque Theatre, the CBC serial radio opera Baby Kintyre (subsequently nominated for a Prix Italia International Broadcast Award) The Bremen Town Musicians with Opera Lyra, The Secret World of Og for the CCOC and Angela and Her Sisters for the University of Manitoba.
Burry is currently working on a new French opera entitled Le nez de la sorcière for Memorial University of Newfoundland (libretto by Mélanie Léger) and Beacon of Light for Rising Tide Theatre, which will mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist crisis.