Directors // Stephen Pickover

Stephen Pickover has directed numerous operas, musicals, and plays both in the U.S. and abroad.   He most recently directed Samson et Dalila at the Pittsburgh Opera.  Stephen is a grant recipient of the Robert and Carol Morris Fund for Artistic Expression and Performing Arts and is currently collaborating with composer Nathan Matthews as librettist on a groundbreaking music-theatre adaptation of Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo.  He has directed with the Los Angeles Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Montreal, Teatro Regio in Turin, Italy, Minnesota and San Francisco Symphonies, and is frequently a Guest Stage Director at the Metropolitan Opera where his repertory includes  Faust, Tristan und Isolde, Norma, Susannah, Moses und Aron, Tannhäuser, Die Fledermaus, The Makropulos Case, Billy Budd, Peter Grimes, Arabella, Fedora, Pelléas et Mélisande, Rusalka, Fidelio, Elisir d’Amore, Kat’a Kabanova, Aida, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Der Fliegende Holländer, Carmen, Khovanschina, Elektra, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Stiffelio, many of which have been broadcast nationally on PBS. 

Stephen has collaborated with world-renowned directors, conductors, and singers, including  Julie Taymor, Jürgen Flimm, Robert Falls, Peter Hall, Jonathan Miller, August Everding, Dieter Dorn, James Levine, Charles Mackerras, Michael Tilson Thomas, Jeffrey Tate, Seiji Ozawa, Erich Leinsdorf, Placido Domingo, Renèe Fleming, Mirella Freni, Marilyn Horne, James Morris, Luciano Pavarotti, Kiri Te Kanawa, Deborah Voigt, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Rene Pape.

Stephen has a passion for developing new work and was Artistic/Resident Director of New York’s Riverside Opera Ensemble, where he conceived and directed Where or When, a new Rodgers and Hart Off-Broadway Revue.  His other directing credits with ROE include the world premiere of Patrick Byers’ opera Incident at San Bajo, Iolanta, Man with a Load of Mischief, the New York premiere of Giulietta è Romeo, Die Dreigroschenoper, Werther, and Hänsel und Gretel.  He developed and directed the new musical Street Sense by Migdalia Cruz and Linda Eisenstein at the Cleveland Public Theatre and was the Artistic Director of Struthers Library Theatre in Pennsylvania, (an historic Equity theatre) where he directed Evita, The Sound of Music, A Day in Hollywood/A Night in the Ukraine, Man of La Mancha, Oklahoma, The Boyfriend, Camelot, The Music Man, and The Fantasticks.  At Struthers, Stephen established, developed and implemented a privately funded internship program with university accreditation.   He has given master classes, lectured, and directed at Southern Methodist, Texas Christian, and New York Universities, as well as The Highlands Opera Program and the Lindeman Young Artist Program at the Metropolitan Opera. 

A native New Yorker, Stephen holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Michigan and a Master of Fine Arts in Directing from Columbia University.