Unique. Distinctive. Brave.

Opera Theater crosses boundaries. Opera Theater reaches out across traditional lines of demarcation in the arts, presenting works which engage diverse, new, and younger audiences. Opera Theater unites supporters of music, theater, dance and the visual arts. Founded in 1978 by noted mezzo soprano Mildred Miller Posvar, Opera Theater of Pittsburgh has a 30-year tradition of presenting innovative opera for imaginative audiences.

Jonathan Eaton, Opera Theater’s current General
and Artistic director, joined the company in 1999. An internationally renowned stage director, Eaton continues Opera Theater’s mission of creating new works, reinterpreting older works in new ways, building diversity in programming and casting, supporting emerging talent, and broadening audiences through outreach and education to bring people from diverse backgrounds together and involve them in experiences that have meaning and impact.

Among Opera Theater’s recent boundary-breaking initiatives:
- Fusion Festival of American-Asian works at the Andy Warhol Museum,
which included the world premiere of RedDust, a multi-media opera by Mathew
Rosenblum, and The Sound of a Voice by Philip Glass and David Henry Hwang.


- The Pittsburgh Ring, two complete cycles of Wagner’s great operas, using
Jonathan Dove’s reorchestration. The Pittsburgh Ring was produced in collaboration
with Long Beach Opera.

- Bizet’s belly-dancing opera Djamileh, performed admist the splendor of
the Persian rug emporium at the gallery Artifacts in Pittsburgh’s West End.

- Just Above My Head, a world premiere Jazzopera by Nathan Davis

- Operatic versions of classic American plays, such as Hoiby’s Summer and
Smoke and Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge

- New works, such as Limbus, a sung and danced jazz/folk opera with
mechanized sculptures.

- Reinterpreted operatic classics, such as Bluebeard’s Castle, performed in
a National Guard Armory, and The Magic Flute, set against the backdrop of the
Masonic Center.