Heralded by Opera News for her “absorbing, provocative staging,” 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 of new productions with the Metropolitan Opera, MusikTheater an der Wien, and The Juilliard School as well as revivals of her productions in a debut with Canadian Opera Company and in returns to the Lyric Opera of Chicago and Santa Fe 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.

Ms. Muller’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 created new productions of The Rake’s Progress for The Juilliard School and Amadigi di Gaula for Boston Baroque. 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” byWashington 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 has returned to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to direct Madama Butterfly, La bohème, and Tosca. Ms. Muller has also led productions of Madama Butterfly for Opera Queensland, Grand Théâtre de Genève, and Houston Grand Opera and La traviata for Minnesota Opera. As a member of the Metropolitan Opera’s directing staff, Ms. Muller has helmed revivals of Don Giovanni as well as Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci and L'elisir d’amore. Her production of Porgy and Bess for the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic as was a new production of Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath at the Aspen Music Festival in 2019.

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 tailored to their repertoire. 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.

For inquiries in Europe: Keiron Cooke/Askonas Holt.

On The Rape of Lucretia:

“…an intense wallop of a well-sung production.…this opera, as presented and gently updated by director Louisa Muller, was at times downright monumental in its statements, with even its whispers sheathed in iron.”
—Washington Post

On Das Rheingold:

“…the Philharmonic, Mr. Gilbert and the director Louisa Muller have stripped the work to its sinews. It is a stark vision—you might be reminded of Ivo Van Hove's scorched-earth approach to classic plays—that pares away almost everything but the music and the characters.…it was a remarkable evening of music theater.”
—The New York Times

On The Ghosts of Versailles:

“It is a dazzling thing all around.…The opportunity to hear a modern work of this stature comes along all too rarely, a production of this quality still rarer.”
—Washington Post

“The large contingent of vibrant singer-actors…burrowed into the plot's criss-crossed layers with great flair under the astute guidance of the director Louisa Muller.”
—Opera

“Chances are that Wolf Trap Opera will be using its production of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles as a touchstone for a long time to come. The venture was satisfying on every level.…The complex layers…inspired deftly detailed stage direction from Louisa Muller, who kept the action fresh and involving." —Opera

“‘A deliberate, powerful and horribly successful study of the magic of evil,’ is how one critic described Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw on its publication in 1898. The same words very much apply to Louisa Muller’s new Garsington staging of Britten’s opera, a beautiful, unsettling piece of theatre that sifts through the work’s ambiguities with a subtlety that in itself has something of the complex finesse of James’s prose…A truly great achievement, devastating and unforgettable.”
—The Guardian

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