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Robert B. Driver -- Artistic Director
Robert B. Driver has been with the Opera Company of Philadelphia since 1991. Under his leadership, the Opera Company has increased its number of performances by 300% from eight to 24, has more than doubled its subscriber base, and has become a principal tenant at the Academy of Music, America's oldest opera house.
Serving as assistant stage director to Günther Rennert, Rudolph Hartmann, and Jean Pierre Ponnelle, Mr. Driver spent three seasons at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper from 1966 until 1968. He also served as assistant director at the Kentucky Opera (1968-1971) and associate director of the Kansas City Lyric Opera (for two seasons beginning in 1974). Mr. Driver established the first opera cooperative among three cities under one artistic director with the Syracuse Opera (1975-87), Indianapolis Opera (1981-91), and Opera Memphis (1984-91). And in 1987, Mr. Driver established the National Center for the Development of American Opera in Memphis. Named the 1993 Citizen of the Year by the PENJERDEL Council, he was also named a finalist in the 1993 "Turnaround" category of the Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards. Under his direction, the Opera Company received the 1994 Arts Excellence Award from the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce's Arts and Business Council. And in 1995, the Chamounix Youth Hostel in Philadelphia named him its Honoree of the Year.
A member of the board of directors of Opera America for over a decade, Mr. Driver also served on the Opera-Musical Theater Panel for the National Endowment of the Arts. He was the first recipient of the Martha Baird Rockefeller Fund for Music grant to stage directors. As a stage director, he has directed more than 90 productions throughout North America, including the Opera Company of Philadelphia's recent productions of Falstaff, La bohème, The Barber of Seville, A Masked Ball, Die Fledermaus, Aida, and La Traviata. Mr. Driver directed a critically-acclaimed original production of The Marriage of Figaro in 2006 and 1999; a 2000 reprisal of the Company's 1995 production of Salome, which was a Company Premiere; and the Philadelphia Premiere of Carlisle Floyd's Susannah in 2003. In spring of 2007 he directs a revival of the 1997 critically-acclaimed production of Falstaff. Under his leadership, in 1994 the Opera Company of Philadelphia established the Opera Company Production Center, building as its first project a new production of The Magic Flute which Mr. Driver directed for Philadelphia in both 1994 and 2001, and which he directed at L'Opéra de Montréal for its first revival. The Opera Company Production Center has produced over 25 original productions which have been seen onstage at more than 40 opera companies in the U.S. and Canada, including productions with important designers such as Cinderella in 2006 with director Davide Livermore and designer Santi Centineo and 2002's acclaimed Don Giovanni, a collaboration between Mr. Driver and world-renowned artist Rafal Olbinski in his U.S. stage design debut.
An avid supporter of emerging artists who is known for his early identification and casting of artists who have gone on to major careers, Mr. Driver maintains a close relationship and supports the casting of supporting roles with rising stars from Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music and Academy of Vocal Arts, and serves each season on countless audition panels and as a judge in vocal competitions from Philadelphia to Treviso, Italy. Mr. Driver also led the Company to its first commission of new work in 25 years with Margaret Garner, a new American opera by Grammy-winning composer Richard Danielpour with a libretto by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, based on the tragic story of a fugitive slave. In addition to co-commissioning the opera, the Opera Company of Philadelphia presented the East Coast Premiere of the work in February 2006 in what The Philadelphia Inquirer described as "… arguably the biggest cultural event ever to hit Philadelphia."
