Born in Venice, Damiano Michieletto made his international debut at the Wexford Festival Opera in 2003 with a highly-acclaimed production of Jaromír Weinberger’s Svanda Dudák, named Opera Production of the Year by The Irish Times. In the intervening decade he has become one of the most interesting young directors in Europe, North America and Asia. He studied opera and theatre production at the Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Art in Milan and also graduated in modern literature at the university in Venice. His other opera productions include L’italiana in Algeri at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, La gazza ladra in a co-production for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and the opera houses in Bologna and Verona (the production won the 2008 Premio Franco Abbiati), Lucia di Lammermoor, Il corsaro, Luisa Miller and Poliuto in Zurich, Roméo et Juliette and a Mozart/Da Ponte cycle at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, La scala di seta at the Rossini Opera Festival and at La Scala, Milan, Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Madama Butterfly in Turin, L’elisir d’amore in Valencia, Graz and Madrid, Martinů’s The Greek Passion in Palermo, Così fan tutte at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, Il trittico at the Theater an der Wien and the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, Un ballo in maschera at La Scala, Idomeneo at the Theater an der Wien and The Rake’s Progress at the Leipzig Opera and the Teatro La Fenice. He made his Salzburg Festival debut with La bohème in 2012 and returned for Falstaff in 2013. In 2014 he returned to Salzburg Festival for Rossini’s La Cenerentola with Cecilia Bartoli. Damiano Michieletto has also directed a number of non-mainstream operas as well as plays, most recently Gogol’s The Government Inspector at the Teatro Stabile del Veneto.
