Jennifer Griesbach, Opera Director

Stage director Jennifer Griesbach has a passion for directing a varied repertory of opera encompassing old and new works. She has directed productions ranging from the very earliest operas (Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Poppea, as well as works by Cavalieri, Francesca Caccini and Cavalli), standard repertory (Handel, Mozart, Offenbach, Puccini) to contemporary works by Lee Hoiby, Domenick Argento, and David Del Tredici. Jennifer has been closely associated with The Wooster Group over the last few years and assisted director Elizabeth LeCompte in the creation of La Didone, a production commissioned by the Kunstenfestival des Arts in Brussels that combined the Wooster Group’s experimental techniques and film source work with extensive work in baroque gesture. Subsequently, La Didone toured Europe (including the Edinburgh Festival) and had extended runs in New York and LA.

Jennifer has created work for Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Boston Baroque, SUNY Stony Brook, UNC Chapel Hill, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, Garden State Opera, Citywide Youth Opera, LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, the Harvard Early Music Society, Opera Nuova and the Monadnock Music Festival and assisted on productions with Boston Lyric Opera, Indianapolis Opera, New Jersey Opera Theater, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Goettingen Handel Festival and the Bronx Opera Company. Jennifer studied acting with the SITI Company and at the Ward Acting Studio (NYC) and baroque gesture and movement in Toronto and Paris. She has a Ph.D. in music history from U.C. Berkeley and has taught workshops and masterclasses at Boston University, the New England Conservatory, Yale University, SUNY Stony Brook, and the Amherst and Vancouver Early Music Festivals and the New York Continuo Collective. She is a member of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab (2008).