Artist Biographies: Michael Scarola

Stage Director Philip Glass/Robert Malasch's "The Photographer" Lou Harrison's opera "Rapunzel"

Michael Scarola, experiencing rapid career growth as a director, began this past season with a very popular staging of Il barbiere di Siviglia at Opera Memphis, followed by Salome for Shreveport Opera. Last summer he mounted The Tender Land for Cabrillo Music Festival with Marin Alsop conducting and has been invited to return this coming summer to stage The Photographer (Philip Glass) and Rapunzel (Lou Harrison.) Last season also included mountings of Pagliacci for Mobile Opera and a double bill of Gianni Schicchi and Buoso's Ghost (M. Ching) for Indianapolis Opera. Other recent works include Acis and Galatea with The Opera Ensemble (Santa Fe, NM.),Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur and Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d’Or for the Israel Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv, Hanseland Gretel for Capital City Opera, Pirates of Penzance and Oklahoma on Cape Cod, and Carmen for Hartt Opera Theater. In November 1999, he jumped in at Opera Company of Philadelphia as Associate Director for Les contes d’Hoffmann. The Opera Orchestra of New York invited Scarola to join their staff in 1998 to direct concert stagings of their performances in Carnegie Hall. The operas have included Lucrezia Borgia (Donizetti), Otello (Verdi), Jerusalem (Verdi), Poliuto (Donizetti), I Masnadieri (Verdi), La Juive (Halevy), and La Sonnambula. Scarola was on the Metropolitan Opera Directing Staff for five seasons, which included his assisting on the Met Premiere of La Cenerentola starring Cecelia Bartoli and con ducted by James Levine and which was telecast on PBS. He also assisted at the Metropolitan Opera on such pieces as Salome, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Rigoletto, Andrea Chenier, The Ghosts of Versailles as well as the Met premieres of Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk and A Midsummer Night's Dream. Making his professional directing debut with the Sarasota Opera in 1996, Scarola directed La Forza del Destino in both the revised and original versions, the latter being the first professionally staged production of the opera in the United States. This was quickly followed by directing debuts with Opera Illinois (Lucia di Lammermoor) and Virginia Opera (Pagliacci). He has since returned to Opera Illinois for Faust and WestSide Story. Scarola has worked with opera companies including Santa Fe, Cincinnati, Florida Grand, New Orleans, Palm Beach, L'opera Francaise de New York, and Opera Pacific. This season began withTosca for Harrisburg Opera (Victoria Bond, conducting) followed by an invitation to return this fall for Candide and another opera in 2002. This March brought his highly successful Don Giovanni in a return to Indianapolis Opera. This is followed by Beatrice and Benedict for Opera Institute at Boston University. Future projects slated include Mikado and South Pacific (Cape Cod), Susannah (Shreveport), and for Knoxville Opera, a mounting of Cenerentola.