Peter Kazaras

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Stage Director Peter Kazaras currently serves as Seattle Opera’s Artistic Advisor and Principal Artistic Director of the Young Artist Development Program, as well as Director of Opera and Music Theater at UCLA. Earlier in his career, he received worldwide acclaim as an operatic tenor, performing at the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Houston Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, Vienna, among many others.  Recently he re-appeared on stage to sing Abe Kaplan in Chautauqua Opera’s production of Street Scene and Emperor Altoum in Seattle Opera’s Turandot.

Of a recent production of Norma with the Seattle Opera, The Seattle Times said “his direction was remarkably good, theatrical and natural at the same time.” Likewise, of a production of Le nozze di Figaro for the Seattle Opera Young Artists Development program, he was praised for his “robust and lively” direction and his “clever, fast-paced staging” with reviewers noting that “Staging <Figaro> is a considerable challenge, one to which Kazaras adroitly rises. A dozen sly little gestures quickly establish character — and you can see every one of those gestures in the intimate ambience of the theater.”

With the Seattle Opera he has also directed Madama Butterfly, Wozzeck, Le nozze di Figaro, Il narbiere di Siviglia, Falstaff and Tristan und Isolde; and for the Seattle Opera Young Artists Development Program, Trouble in Tahiti, Rita, L’Enfant et les Sortileges, Gianni Schicchi, The Turn of the Screw, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Ariadne auf Naxos.

Additional directing engagements have included Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti for the Caramoor Festival, Le nozze di Figaro and Falstaff at Opera Cleveland, a semi-staged version of Ernst Krenek’s What Price Confidence? at the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, Puccini’s Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi for Hartt College of Music, Tchaikovsky’s Iolanta for the Academy of Vocal Arts, Menotti’s The Medium and Ibert’s Angelique for San Francisco Opera’s Merola Program, Marschner’s Der Vampyr for Florida State University, Mark Adamo’s Little Women at the Cabrillo Festival, and Die Fledermaus for Madison Opera.

Projects for EOS Orchestra have included staging and singing Schuetz’ The Birth of Jesus; staging Arianna Zukerman in a selection of Schubert lieder, to be repeated this fall with Red: An Orchestra, in Cleveland; concert staging and lighting for Act III of Adams’ Nixon in China at Alice Tully Hall; staging of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella; and staging a concert reading of excerpts from Bernard Herrmann’s Wuthering Heights.

For Spoleto Festival USA he served as Artistic Advisor and sang The Madwoman in an acclaimed production of Britten’s Curlew River.  He has also staged a program of Operetta excerpts for New York Festival of Song, directed three casts in Britten’s The Turn of the Screw for the Chautauqua Institute Music School, as well as staged, designed lights for, and performed the Tenor soloist in Britten’s War Requiem for the Milwaukee Symphony.  In addition, he staged the original 1998 workshop of Jonathan Sheffer’s Blood on the Dining Room Floor, which led to an off-Broadway production. He has given Master Classes at Florida State University, Yale and Vassar, where he co-directed their Opera Workshop, and at the Chautauqua Institute School of Music Vocal Department.

A native New Yorker, Peter Kazaras is a graduate of Harvard College and resides in Manhattan. In addition to singing and directing, he also coaches singers and actors privately in performance technique.