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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%, and has become a principal tenant at the Academy of Music, America's oldest opera house, while expanding to also produce in the Kimmel Center’s Perelman Theater, an intimate, 600-seat venue – both located at the heart of Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts.
Serving as assistant stage director to Günther Rennert, Rudolph Hartmann, and Jean Pierre Ponnelle, Mr. Driver cut his teeth on opera spending three seasons at Munich's Bayerische Staatsoper from 1966 until 1968. After returning to the United States, he went on to serve 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. 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, Mr. Driver has directed more than 100 productions throughout North America, including the Opera Company of Philadelphia's recent productions of Rigoletto, Falstaff, La bohème, A Masked Ball, Die Fledermaus and Aida. He directed the Company Premiere of Salome (1995 & 2000) and the Philadelphia Premiere of Carlisle Floyd’s esteemed 20th Century masterpiece Susannah. Under his leadership, the Opera Company Production Center was established in 1994, 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 Production Center has produced dozens of 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 renowned artist Rafal Olbinski in his U.S. stage design debut. Mr. Driver recently collaborated with critically-acclaimed international artist Jun Kaneko to realize a new Fidelio to open the Opera Company’s 2008-2009 Season, which was called “A triumph” by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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." The following season brought with it the East Coast Premiere of another new American work, David DiChiera and Bernard Uzan’s Cyrano, as well as the Philadelphia Premiere of Osvaldo Golijov’s Grammy-winning opera Ainadamar, produced in a first-time collaboration between the Curtis Institute of Music, Opera Company of Philadelphia and Kimmel Center Presents at the Kimmel Center’s intimate Perelman Theater. Mr. Driver directed the closing production of the 2008-2009 Season with an innovative double-bill of two operas: Ravel’s L'enfant et les sortileges and Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Brought to life in collaboration with set designer Guia Buzzi and video designer Lorenzo Curone, the production was praised by The Philadelphia Inquirer, which said, “Under Robert B. Driver's highly specific direction, the smallest characters projected their own sense of inner life.”
