About this Artist

Described by The New York Times as “opera’s disrupter in residence,” director Yuval Sharon has been creating an unconventional body of work that seeks to expand the operatic form. 

He founded and serves as Artistic Director of The Industry in Los Angeles, an acclaimed company devoted to new and experimental opera that has brought opera into moving vehicles, operating train stations, and various “non-spaces” such as warehouses, parking lots, and escalator corridors. Sharon conceived, directed, and produced the company’s acclaimed world premieres of Hopscotch, Invisible Cities, and Crescent City. 

His stage productions in more conventional spaces have been described as “ingenious” (The New York Times), “dizzyingly spectacular” (New York Magazine), and “staggering” (Opera News). He is the recipient of the 2014 Götz Friedrich Prize in Germany for his production of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic (Karlsruhe and Seville). Sharon also directed a landmark production of John Cage’s Song Books at the San Francisco Symphony and Carnegie Hall with Joan La Barbara, Meredith Monk, and Jessye Norman. Other projects include his production of Cunning Little Vixen, the first fully-staged opera ever presented in Vienna’s historic Musikverein, and Péter Eötvös’ Three Sisters at the Wiener Staatsoper. In 2018, Sharon became the first American director at the Bayreuther Festspiele with his production of Lohengrin.

This week’s performances of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS are the culmination of Sharon’s three-year residency at the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Recent productions have included Europeras 1 & 2 (November 2018 at Sony Pictures Studios), an original setting of War of the Worlds (Fall 2017), and a staging of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde (Spring 2018).

Sharon was honored with a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theater.