bio information

Isabel Milenski

Isabel Milenski has received critical acclaim as an opera director of striking originality and emotional power. Upcoming she will be directing Shostakovich's Operetta Moscow Cheremushki for Long Beach Opera. She recently she made her Lincoln Center debut directing Juilliard's Marriage of Figaro. She has held the position of Artistic Director for Hofstra University's Opera Theater for three years, where she has brought bold productions and innovative teaching techniques.

Ms. Milenski’s career began staging the Long Beach Opera production of Iacopo Peri's Euridice at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles to commemorate the birth of opera in 2000. She later returned to The Getty to stage Virginia Woolf's only play, Freshwater. For the Long Beach Opera she has directed Jenufa, Milhaud's Trois Operas Minutes, the west-coast premiere of Richard Strauss' comic masterwork Die Schweigsame Frau, along with Semele.

In San Francisco she directed the world premiere of Gang Situ's The Grand Seducers, a cross-cultural opera for the Chinese Culture Center. Ms. Milenski was awarded the Directorial Fellowship from San Francisco Opera's Merola program in 2003 where she has returned in consecutive years to teach and direct. In 2006 she directed Carmen with the Opera Center’s Adler Fellows at the Mondavi Center. Internationally she has conceived and directed a theater production of Carmen based on Merimee's novella at the Telemac Theatre in Nimes, France.

She has directed a rock opera, The Fire Odyssey, an adaptation of Homer's Odyssey at the Crucible's Fire Arts Festival in Oakland, Ca. Since accepting the position of Artistic Director at Hofstra, she produced and directed The Coronation of Poppea, Die Fledermaus and will direct Don Giovanni in 2011.

Conservatory productions include Cosi Fan Tutte and The Turn of the Screw at Cincinnati Conservatory, which won a National Opera Association award. In Cincinnati she also co-directed Argento's The Voyage of Edgar Allen Poe. Other productions include The Bartered Bride, Street Scene and The Pirates of Penzance for Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids. In New York, where she resides, along with directing, she has been teaching workshops and master classes for conservatories such as The Juilliard School. Upcoming she will be directing an adaptation of Wagner’s Ring cycle as a site specific piece in New York City.