Nicholas Muni

As a freelance stage director, Nicholas Muni has directed over 200 productions with companies in North America, Europe, and Australia. His relationships with the Houston Grand Opera and Seattle Opera have resulted in two acclaimed co-productions: Il Trovatore, which has been presented in Seattle, Houston, Tulsa, Melbourne, Vancouver, Toronto, and San Francisco, and Norma, which has been presented in Seattle, Houston, Cincinnati, and Los Angeles.

Additional work with Houston Grand Opera has included the world premiere of Jackie O, an opera based on the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis that was also presented at Banff Center for the Arts in Alberta, Canada.

Mr. Muni's production credits with the Canadian Opera Company include Lulu (three-act version), Rigoletto, Jenůfa, which received the DORA award for best theater production of 2003, and Pelléas et Mélisande. At Opera Theatre of St. Louis, he created productions for La Finta Giardiniera, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Iphigènie en Tauride. And at Minnesota Opera he directed Rusalka, Don Giovanni, Rigoletto, and two world premieres: Libby Larsen's Frankenstein, The Modern Prometheus and Robert Moran's From the Towers of the Moon.

The 1993-94 season marked his European debut at Stadttheater Gießen with La Fille du Régiment. Its success led to subsequent engagements at that same theater for productions of Idomeneo, Die Zauberflöte, and The Rake's Progress. The 1993 season also marked his debuts with Boston Lyric Opera (the American premiere of the Neopolitan version of Bellini's I Puritani) and the Tiroler Landestheater in Innsbruck, Austria (La Bohème). In what is considered one of his most interesting projects, Mr. Muni directed a unique chamber version of Berg's Wozzeck as a co-production of the Banff Center for the Arts and Montreal Nouvel Ensemble Moderne.

Mr. Muni served as artistic director for Tulsa Opera from 1987 to 1993 and for Cincinnati Opera from 1996 to 2005.

Recently completed projects include the U.S. premiere of Wagner's Das Liebesverbot at Glimmerglass Opera, Postcard from Morocco at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, and L'amico Fritz with the San Francisco Opera Merola Program.