Alison Moritz

Opera is...

Summary

20/21 Season News

Coming this fall, Alison makes her debut in Virtual Reality with MIRANDA, co-produced by Opera Omaha, the LUMA Projection Festival, and Tri-Cities Opera.

Alison Moritz looking into the camera with a determined expression.

Meet Alison

Stage Director Alison Moritz is quickly garnering a reputation for incisive takes on contemporary American opera and innovative interpretations of the classic repertoire.

Alison Moritz’s productions have been lauded as “raw, funny, surreal, and disarmingly human” by Opera News. Upcoming 2020-2021 projects include world premieres for the Glimmerglass Festival, Experiments in Opera and Contemporaneous, as well as new productions for Chicago Opera Theatre and Opera Santa Barbara. In fall of 2020, Alison makes her first foray into the world of VR directing Miranda (Sankaram/Reese; co-produced by LUMA Projection Festival, Opera Omaha, and Tri-Cities Opera).

Her diverse 2019-2020 season included mainstage debuts at Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Opera Omaha, Ravinia Festival, and Rice University. Other recent directing highlights include the world premieres of Proving Up (Mazzoli/Vavrek; Washington National Opera), Taking Up Serpents (Sankaram/Dye; Washington National Opera), Chunky in Heat (Experiments in Opera, NYC), and Penelope (Snider/McLaughlin; new performing edition for Lyric Opera of Kansas City). Her production of Bernstein’s Candide was featured at the 2018 Tanglewood Festival as part of the composer’s centennial celebration, and won several regional awards (including Best Director).

Additional directing highlights include new productions of The Manchurian Candidate (Puts/Campbell; Austin Opera), Orpheus in the Underworld (New Orleans Opera), Abduction from the Seraglio (Madison Opera), Trouble in Tahiti (Opera Santa Barbara), and a genre-bending triple bill of rarities for Bard Conservatory (Pulcinella, Full Moon in March, and Svadba). Alison also recently directed productions of La Traviata (Opera Colorado), La Bohème (Austin Opera), and Madama Butterfly (Central City Opera).

Committed to contemporary American repertoire, Alison has workshopped pieces by David Hertzberg and Rene Orth for Opera Philadelphia, created new productions of The Tender Land, Our Town, Hydrogen Jukebox, Cabildo, and Gallantry, and presented staged concerts for IlluminArts Miami and New York Festival of Song. In 2015, Alison Moritz and her design team won the Opera American Director-Designer Showcase for their presentation on Marc Blitzstein's Cradle Will Rock.

Previously, Alison served as the Resident Assistant Director at both the Minnesota Opera and The Atlanta Opera. Her professional credits include engagements with Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, Wolf Trap Opera, Opera Memphis, and Chautauqua Opera. As a teacher and guest director, Alison has taught at Eastman School of Music, Maryland Opera Studio, Crane School of Music, and for Steven Blier and Caramoor’s Vocal Rising Stars program. She continues her ongoing collaborations with innovative orchestras The Knights and Contemporaneous.

Alison has worked and trained with companies such as the SITI Company of New York City, OPERA America, Geva Theatre Center, Third Rail Projects, Nautilus Music Theater, and Shakespeare Festival St. Louis. She holds a B.A. in Music and Art History from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.M. from Eastman School of Music, and was the recipient of the 2015-2016 SDCF/Kurt Weill Foundations Fellowship. Alison is based in New York City.

Portfolio

"Alison Moritz directs the evening, and her use of the Williams Stables space is both sensitive and bold. She presents the two operas, the nostalgic dream fantasy and the broad soap opera comedy, with obvious care and affection, placing her singer-actors in the best light..."

Opera is...

imagination.
social.
progressive.
theatre.

Her Schedule

See Alison’s schedule of imaginative and entertaining productions, with links to related companies.

Jan2021
Little Women
Opera Santa Barbara
Jan 15, 17 2021
New Production for Opera Santa Barbara
In Louisa May Alcott’s novel, we see American girlhood immortalized for the ages--its triumphs and frustrations parallel the adolescence of our young country itself. A close reading of Little Women shows us that this book is not a primer on cozy domesticity, but rather a lesson in female solidarity in the face tremendous turmoil. For this new production, Alison reexamines femininity onstage by challenging the various 'roles' that women must play in order to move through the world: daughter, wife, mother, muse, etc. It’s time to acknowledge that women have long been as active as men in creating the changing world around us, both in our everyday lives and on the operatic stage. Let us then see the riotous creativity and passion of girls for what it is - a powerful agent for change.
Feb2021
Taking Up Serpents
Chicago Opera Theater
February 2021
New Production for Chicago Opera Theatre
What are the opportunities and costs of faith? How is trauma passed down from one generation to the next? After times of extreme difficulty, how can we begin to heal? Alison returns to this story of a family seeking faith, having directed the acclaimed world premiere of Taking Up Serpents (Kamala Sankaram/Jerre Dye) for Washington National Opera in 2019. Along with an all-new design team, Alison is creating a bold new hybrid of opera and film to tell this story from a uniquely dramatic and psychological perspective as part of Chicago Opera Theatre’s upcoming digital season.
May2021
Portrait and a Dream
Contemporaneous
May 2021
World Premiere for Contemporaneous
Portrait and a Dream is a new opera about the life work of Jackson Pollock, commissioned for Contemporaneous’ first ever Day of Imagination. Using interviews and taped conversations with Pollock, composer Brian Petuch has invented a new genre of bio-opera, dense in its symbolism, yet starkly objective. Director Alison Moritz teams up with designer Magnus Pind to bring the visual and dramatic world of this unique piece to life.