Louisa Muller
In the 2018–19 season, Louisa Muller makes directing debuts at Garsington Opera, LA Opera, and Minnesota Opera. In recent seasons, she has directed at the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Opera Queensland, and Atlanta Opera. She received considerable critical acclaim for her 2017 staging of Das Rheingold with the New York Philharmonic, which the New York Times called “riveting…a remarkable evening of music theater” and named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the year.
Her summer home since 2015 has been Wolf Trap Opera, where she has directed new productions of Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (Washington Post: “a dazzling thing all around”; Opera News: “thoroughly inspired staging”), The Rape of Lucretia (Washington Post: “an intense wallop of a well-sung production”; Opera News: “absorbing, provocative staging”), and Tosca (Washington Classical Review: “searing summer verismo.”) This year she returns to Wolf Trap for a new production of Roméo et Juliette.
Louisa returns to the Metropolitan Opera for her eleventh season on the directing staff, where she has directed revivals of Don Giovanni, Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci, and L’elisir d’amore. At the Met she has assisted directors such as David McVicar, Robert Lepage, Robert Carsen, Bartlett Sher, Michael Grandage, Stephen Wadsworth, Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier, John Copley, and Giancarlo del Monaco. In 2018–19 she returns to direct Don Giovanni.
Previously Louisa was a staff director at Houston Grand Opera, where she prepared alternate casts of La bohème and Beatrice and Benedict and directed Theofanidis’s The Refuge, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly at Miller Outdoor Theatre. She has also served on the directing staffs of Santa Fe Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Opera North (USA).
Louisa is passionate about dramatic training for singers. She is on the faculty of the Scuola di Belcanto, Urbania and has worked regularly with the artists in the renowned Houston Grand Opera Studio. She has served as a guest coach at the National Opera Studio in London, HGO’s Young Artists’ Vocal Academy, Wolf Trap Opera Studio, Lawrence University, and the University of Texas at Brownsville, as well as directing opera scenes for the Houston Grand Opera Studio, Santa Fe Opera, and Wolf Trap Opera Studio.
Louisa holds degrees from Lawrence University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is a citizen of the United States and Germany. She makes her home in Vienna with her husband, conductor and pianist Eric Melear.
