Codemakers: Peter Sellars

Director Peter Sellars is regarded as perhaps the most important figure in theater and opera over the past half century. Sellars has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of classics, advocacy of twentieth century and contemporary music, and collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative and performing artists.

Sellars has staged operas at the Dutch National Opera, English National Opera, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Opéra National de Paris, Salzburg Festival, and San Francisco Opera among others.

Sellars has collaborated on the creation of many works with composer John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and The Girls of the Golden West. Inspired by the compositions of Kaija Saariaho, he has guided the creation of productions of her work (L’Amour de loin, Adriana Mater, Only the Sound Remains) that have expanded the repertoire of modern opera.

Sellars has led several major arts festivals, including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals and the 2002 Adelaide Arts Festival. In 2006 he was artistic director of New Crowned Hope, a festival in Vienna for which he invited emerging and established artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, theater, dance, film, the visual arts and architecture for the celebration of Mozart’s 250th birth anniversary.

Sellars is a distinguished professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA, a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival, and was a mentor for the Rolex Arts Initiative. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been awarded the prestigious Polar Music Prize and been named Artist of the Year by Musical America. In the fall of 2021 fall he was honored with the EBU-IMZ Lifetime Achievement Award for his body of opera video recordings.