Stage director James Robinson is regarded as one of America’s most inventive and sought after directors. He has won wide acclaim for productions that range from standard repertory, to world premieres, to seldom performed works and he is considered the most widely performed director of opera in North America.
Stage director James Robinson is regarded as one of America’s most inventive and sought after directors. He has won wide acclaim for productions that range from standard repertory, to world premieres, to seldom performed works and he is considered the most widely performed director of opera in North America.
In 2000 James Robinson was named as Artistic Director of Opera Colorado in Denver and oversaw its successful move into its new home, the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, in the autumn of 2005. The company continues to gain wide recognition for its adventurous programming and artistic excellence.
Since then, he has taken up the post of Artistic Director of Opera Theater of St Louis. His first production there was a landmark version of John Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (a co-production with the Wexford Festival in Ireland).
Past seasons’ productions further include Die Entführung aus dem Serail and La Bohème for Houston Grand Opera, L’elisir d’amore for Boston Lyric Opera, Káťa Kabanová and Eugene Onegin for Opera Ireland, Norma for the Royal Swedish Opera, Handel’s Rinaldo for Opera Australia, Handel’s Radamisto and Dominick Argento’s Miss Havisham’s Fire for Opera Theatre of St. Louis and his widely seen production of Nixon in China for Opera Colorado. His production of Turandot, first produced for the Minnesota Opera in 1995, has since been adopted by more than twenty-five companies in North America.
James Robinson has directed numerous new productions for the New York City Opera, including Il Trittico, Il Viaggio a Reims, Lucia di Lammermoor, Hänsel und Gretel (co-produced with Los Angeles Opera) and the widely acclaimed La Bohème (broadcast on Public Television as part of “Live from Lincoln Center” in 2001). In 2002, he made his Houston Grand Opera debut with a new production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail and followed up this production with La Bohème, Lucia and Giulio Cesare. He directed new productions of Elektra and Norma for the Canadian Opera Company, The Rake’s Progress and Cosi fan tutte for the Santa Fe Opera, Carmen for the Seattle Opera, Antheil’s Transatlantic and Lucia for the Minnesota Opera, and Eugene Onegin for Boston Lyric Opera. In 2004 he directed the world premiere of Daniel Catan’s Salsipuedes for the Houston Grand Opera and in the same year, his production of Nixon in China, first produced by Opera Theatre of St. Louis, was seen throughout the United States.
In the 2009/10 season, James directed The Ghosts of Versailles at the Wexford Festival, Dominick Argento’s Casanova’s Homecoming with the Minnesota Opera and Die Entführung aus dem Serail for Welsh National Opera.
Highlights of the 2010/11 season include productions of Un Ballo in Maschera with Washington National Opera, a return to Wexford Festival with The Golden Ticket, Nixon in China with the Canadian Opera Company and Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher at the Barbican Centre, London and with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Marin Alsop.
James Robinson is represented by Intermusica.
December 2011 / 486 words. Not to be altered without permission. Please destroy all previous biographical material.
Adams The Death of Klinghoffer / Opera Theatre of St. Louis / Cond. Michael Christie
“…thoughtful and sensitive staging by James Robinson should go a long way toward opening minds about Klinghoffer."
Heidi Walesom, The Wall Street Journal, June 2011
“Artistic director James Robinson shines in the contemporary repertoire;
Klinghoffer is one of the best things he's done here… Robinson uses the same symbols - stones, suitcases, a young boy - to express the colliding tragedies of the two peoples. The simplicity of every aspect of this production is much of what makes it so compelling.”
STL Today, June 2011
“The OTSL did the piece proud, surrounding it with a first rate performance and production, by James Robinson, the company’s artistic director, that I found more eloquent, more humane, more involving, than the Peter Sellers-Mark Morris original.”
John von Rhein, MENAFN.com, August 2011
Director, Adams Nixon in China
Canadian Opera Company / cond. Pablo Heras-Casado
"The COC’s first-ever production, created by James Robinson for Opera Theatre of St. Louis in 2004, takes careful stock of the work in all its registers of meaning. It draws out themes that were less explicit in the realistic debut productionof 1987."
Robert Everett-Green, The Globe and Mail, Feb 2011
"Nixon in China has finally landed in Toronto. John Adams’ 1987 opera, after playing all over the world, had its Canadian premiere in James Robinson’s riveting production as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad. Now that production has come to the Canadian Opera Company and demonstrates quite clearly why Adams’ work has been hailed as one of the most important 20th-century operas."
“The brilliance of Robinson’s production is to place that meeting within two contexts—one eastern, one western—that draw universal meaning from a particular event.”
Christopher Hoile, EyeWeekly.com, Feb 2011