Yuval Sharon

On September 9, 2020, Yuval Sharon was named the Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director. Described by The New York Times as "opera's disrupter in residence," director Yuval Sharon has been creating an unconventional body of work that seeks to expand the operatic form.

Yuval founded and serves as Artistic Director of The Industry in Los Angeles, a company devoted to new and experimental opera that has brought opera into moving vehicles, operating train stations, Hollywood sound stages, and various “non-spaces” such as warehouses, parking lots, and escalator corridors. Sharon conceived, directed, and produced the company’s acclaimed world premieres of Sweet Land, Hopscotch, Invisible Cities, and Crescent City. He also devised and directed the company’s two “performance installations”: In C at the Hammer Museum and Nimbus at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Sharon is the recipient of the 2014 Götz Friedrich Prize in Germany for his production of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic, originally produced at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe and later presented in Seville's Teatro de la Maestranza. He also directed a landmark production of John Cage’s Song Books at the San Francisco Symphony and Carnegie Hall with Joan La Barbara, Meredith Monk, and Jessye Norman. His 2016 production of Peter Eötvös's Three Sisters at the Wiener Staatsoper led Opernwelt to call him "one of the most interesting arrivals on the musical landscape." His production of Cunning Little Vixen, originally produced at the Cleveland Orchestra, was the first fully-staged opera ever presented in Vienna’s Musikverein in October 2017. In 2018 Sharon became the first American director at the Bayreuther Festspiele with his production of Lohengrin.

From 2016-2019, Sharon was the first Artist-in-Residence at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, creating nine projects that included newly commissioned works, site-specific installations, and performances outside the hall. The culmination of his residency was a major revival of Meredith Monk’s opera ATLAS, which made him the first director Monk entrusted with a new production of her work. Other projects included an original setting of War of the Worlds; a staging of Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Gustavo Dudamel; and rare stagings of Lou Harrison’s Young Caesar and John Cage’s Europeras 1 & 2.

Sharon was honored with a 2017 MacArthur Fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Art grant for theater.