Stephen Wadsworth Biography

Stephen Wadsworth’s productions of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Wagner’s Ring cycle, a series of Marivaux comedies, and plays and operas by Shakespeare, Molière, Handel, Goldoni, Mozart, Shaw, Wilde, and Coward, have established him as a master of the classical repertoire and one of the most influential directors in the American theater. He has directed plays by John Guare (Dallas Theatre Centre), Beth Henley (Roundabout), Terrence McNally (Kennedy Center) and Anna Deavere Smith (Long Wharf) and during the 1990s reintroduced the work of Marivaux to the U.S. in a series of translations and productions of three plays (published by Smith and Kraus as Marivaux: Three Plays). His new translation of Molière’s Don Juan (Shakespeare Theatre, Old Globe, Seattle Rep, McCarter) reimagined a lost text and excited great interest in the French academy, and the French government named him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters. He has also translated and adapted theater works by Monteverdi, Goldoni and Handel, and worked as writer and Dramaturg on many new operas and plays, including A Quiet Place, just produced at New York City Opera, which he wrote with Leonard Bernstein. This season he directs a new Boris Godunov at the Metropolitan Opera, stages The Bartered Bride in a Met-Juilliard collaboration, revives Iphigénie en Tauride at the Met, and brings his production of McNally’s Master Class to the Manhattan Theatre Club on Broadway, starring Tyne Daly. He also worked with Ms. Daly, and Delroy Lindo, on the Aeschylus Agamemnon at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles. Wadsworth has directed opera for the Teatro alla Scala, Royal Opera Covent Garden, Vienna Staatsoper, the Edinburgh Festival, and in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Santa Fe and Seattle, where his famous Ring will be revived in 2013. Wadsworth is The James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow at the Juilliard School, where he leads the advanced training program for singers, and Head of Dramatic Studies at the Metropolitan Opera.