PETER KAZARAS, Voice Judge
The Director of Opera at UCLA, Peter Kazaras is also Artistic Director of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program, a position he has held since 2006. As a tenor, he has performed worldwide, appearing at the Metropolitan, La Scala, Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Seattle, Geneva, Genova, Nice, Houston and Dallas, among other places. World premieres include Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles at the Met, Bernstein’s A Quiet Place and Tippett’s New Year (Houston), and Picker’s Thérèse Raquin (Dallas Opera). Conductors he has worked with include Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, James Conlon, John Nelson, Armin Jordan, Asher Fisch and Robert Spano.
Over the past decade, he also worked with great success as a stage director, with productions including Norma, Le nozze di Figaro and Falstaff for Seattle Opera. Recent productions include Le nozze di Figaro and new productions of Falstaff and Norma for Seattle Opera where he will also direct a new production of Tristan und Isolde in summer 2010 and Il barbiere di Siviglia in the fall.
Each summer over the past several years, he has returned to the Chautauqua Institution for master classes and individual coaching in Marlena Malas’s Vocal Program. In summer 2007 he made his Wolf Trap debut directing a revival of Musto’s Volpone that was nominated for a Grammy, and in 2008 he returned to San Francisco Opera Center’s Merola Program for a new production of Albert Herring.
A regular panelist on the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera Radio Quiz, Mr. Kazaras has also served on the panel of the first and second International Wagner Competitions at Seattle Opera, the first Elardo International Competition in New York, the Les Azuriales Competition in Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat in France and Marilyn Horne’s competition at Music Academy of the West. He has adjudicated twice at The Juilliard School, and has also served as a judge for the Metropolitan Opera National Council District Auditions.
