Davy Cunningham was born in Scotland and initially studied philosophy at Stirling University. As a lighting designer he has worked on over 200 music and spoken theatre productions around the world and has been awarded a prize by the Bohuslav Martinu Society in the Czech Republic. In spoken theatre, he has worked on numerous productions in London's West End (Ivanov, Much Ado About Nothing), for the Royal Shakespeare Company (The Taming of the Shrew), for the National Theatre, the Old Vic, The Abbey and The Gate in Dublin and for The Druid in Galway. In music theatre, he has designed the lighting on productions at the Royal Opera House (The Greek Passion), English National Opera (Manon Lescaut, Nabucco, A Midsummer Night’s Dream), Bavarian State Opera (The Excursions of Mr. Broucek, Katya Kabanova, Faust, I Puritani), Berlin State Opera (Don Carlos), the Metropolitan Opera (Roméo et Juliette, Macbeth), Leipzig Opera (Les Troyens, Fidelio, Der Freischütz), Aalto Musiktheater Essen (Wozzeck, La Fanciulla del West, Cavalleria Rusticana / I Pagliacci), Nederlandse Opera (Norma, L’elisir d’amore), the Théâtre de La Monnaîe in Brussels (Lady Macbeth, La Cenerentola, Turn of the Screw), at the Istanbul International Music Festival in Topkapi Museum (Die Entführung aus dem Serail), Opera Monte Carlo (Der Rosenkavalier), Opéra National de Paris (Manon Lescaut) as well as in Antwerp, Barcelona, Basel, Belgrade, Bologna, Brussels, Frankfurt, Göteborg, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Lausanne, Los Angeles, Lyon, Mannheim, Montpellier, Nancy, Oslo, Sydney and Vienna. At the Bregenz Festival he was in charge of lighting design on Tosca, The Greek Passion, Fidelio, The Flying Dutchman and Nabucco.