Biography

Los Angeles-based director and designer James Darrah (stage director) has created a varied body of work, including new theater and opera productions and video and film installations. Recent projects include the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli's operatic adaptation of Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves for Opera Philadelphia and the Prototype Festival in New York; a return to his annual residency with Opera Omaha, where he launched a production of Handel’s Semele in a co-production with Opera Philadelphia; direction and design for a music video for mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato’s album In War and Peace; and his European directorial debut with Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon, Portugal for Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride. Mr. Darrah’s projects with the San Francisco Symphony include an installment in the SoundBox series and semi-staged productions of Peer Gynt, Peter Grimes, Missa solemnis, On the Town, and, most recently, Mahler’s Das klagende Lied. With the Cincinnati Symphony he has undertaken a three-year project based on Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas et Mélisande; in 2017 he directs Debussy’s opera of the same name in collaboration with Cincinnati Symphony and Cincinnati Opera. In 2018 he makes his German debut with a production of Handel’s Alcina with Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe and directs the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli’s opera Proving Up, co-commissioned by Washington National Opera and the Miller Theater. Mr. Darrah is artistic director for an annual spring festival and artist residency with Opera Omaha.

(June 2017)