“One of the world’s most acclaimed and visionary opera directors is taking the creative reins of Michigan Opera Theatre,” writes Mark Stryker in Wednesday’s (9/9) Detroit Free Press. “The company announced today that Illinois-born Yuval Sharon, 40, has signed a five-year contract as artistic director [replacing] MOT’s beloved late founder, David DiChiera. Sharon is best-known for experimental, site-specific productions of 21st-century operas with a high-tech sheen,” including by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “Sharon … has also directed forward-looking productions in traditional idioms at prestigious European companies such as the Vienna State Opera and Bayreuth Festival in Germany…. On the job since August 1, he inaugurates his local tenure [in October] with a radically reconceived chamber-music reduction of Richard Wagner’s ‘Götterdämmerung’ (‘Twilight of the Gods’) staged in MOT’s parking garage and sung in English [with] soprano Christine Goerke [as] Brünnhilde…. Sharon will [also] engineer … a winter 2021 production with a social-justice theme…. Sharon will direct at least one opera a year, and he promised that guest directors and conductors will reflect greater diversity in terms of race and gender than in the past.”
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