Within only a short space of time Damiano Michieletto has emerged on the international scene as one of the most interesting representatives of the younger generation of Italian directors. He studied opera and theatre production at the Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Art in Milan and also graduated in modern literature at the university in Venice, his home town. His critically acclaimed production of Jaromír Weinberger’s Švanda the Bagpiper at the 2003 Wexford Festival won an Irish Times / ESB Theatre Award. His other opera productions include L’italiana in Algeri at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, La gazza ladra in a co-production for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro and the opera houses in Bologna and Verona (the production won the 2008 Premio Franco Abbiati), Lucia di Lammermoor, Il corsaro, Luisa Miller and Poliuto in Zurich, Roméo et Juliette and a Mozart/Da Ponte cycle at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, La scala di seta at the Rossini Opera Festival and at La Scala, Milan, Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Madama Butterfly in Turin, L’elisir d’amore in Valencia, Graz and Madrid, Martinů’s The Greek Passion in Palermo, Così fan tutte at the New National Theatre in Tokyo, Il trittico at the Theater an der Wien and the Royal Opera in Copenhagen, Un ballo in maschera at La Scala, Idomeneo at the Theater an der Wien and The Rake’s Progress at the Leipzig Opera and the Teatro La Fenice.
