LOUISA MULLER
STAGE DIRECTOR
Heralded by Opera News for her “absorbing, provocative staging,” this season Louisa Muller returns to Garsington Opera to direct Platée and makes debuts with Santa Fe Opera with La traviata for the company's opening night and Pinchgut Opera with Rinaldo, all new productions. Her future engagements include debuts with Theater an der Wien, Canadian Opera Company, and Dallas Opera, as well as returns to Santa Fe Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Garsington Opera.
Last season she brought a new production of Dame Ethel Smyth's The Wreckers to Houston Grand Opera in a critically acclaimed debut. She also revived her production of Handel’s Amadigi di Gaula for Philharmonia Baroque and returned to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to lead its production of Ernani.
Louisa's production of The Turn of the Screw for Garsington Opera received the prestigious Royal Philharmonic Society Award and was named by The Guardian as one of the Top Ten Classical Music Performances of the Year. She received rich critical acclaim for her staging of Das Rheingold with the New York Philharmonic, which the New York Times called “riveting…a remarkable evening of music theater” and named among its list of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year. She has created new productions of Amadigi di Gaula for Boston Baroque and The Rake’s Progress for The Juilliard School. In addition, she directed concert stagings of Ariadne auf Naxos at the Edinburgh International Festival and Don Giovanni at the Royal Conservatory Antwerp. She is also a recent finalist in the “Newcomer” category of the International Opera Awards.
She has been a frequent and beloved presence at Wolf Trap Opera, where she has directed new productions of Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, called “a dazzling thing all around” by the Washington Post; The Rape of Lucretia, with the Washington Post again heralding her work as “an intense wallop of a well-sung production;” Tosca, praised as “searing summer verismo” by Washington Classical Review; and Roméo et Juliette, “the drama taut” and with “compelling stage pictures,” reported the Washington Post.
She has led performances of Tannhäuser and Don Carlo with Los Angeles Opera and La traviata for Minnesota Opera and has returned to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to direct Madama Butterfly, La bohème, and Tosca. She has also directed revivals of Madama Butterfly for Opera Queensland, Grand Théâtre de Genève, and Houston Grand Opera. As a member of the Metropolitan Opera's directing staff, she has helmed revivals of Don Giovanni, Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, and L'elisir d'amore. Her productions of Porgy and Bess for the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester and The Grapes of Wrath at the Aspen Music Festival were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Invested in the dramatic training for singers, she has twice directed the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Rising Stars concert featuring its Ryan Opera Center and has collaborated with those singers in individual dramatic coaching. She has given masterclasses and dramatic coaching at the National Opera Studio in London, Houston Grand Opera Studio and Young Artists Vocal Academy, Wolf Trap Opera, Baylor University, University of Wisconsin, Lawrence University, and the University of Texas and has been a faculty member of the Scuola di Belcanto in Urbania, Italy. She has directed scenes programs for Santa Fe Opera, Houston Grand Opera Studio, Wolf Trap Opera Studio, and Rice University.
She holds degrees from Lawrence University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a citizen of the United States and Germany and makes her home in Vienna.