The Inaugural Director of Opera UCLA from 2007-2024, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music, Peter Kazaras also served as the Inaugural Susan G. and Mitchel D. Covel MD Chair at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music from 2016-2021. A stage director, singer, and creative producer, he was also Artistic Director of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program from 2006 to 2013.
Over the past three decades, he has worked with great success as a stage director, with productions including Norma, Le nozze di Figaro (in three different productions), Falstaff, Tristan und Isolde, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Madama Butterfly (jumbo screen simulcast to the Key Arena), The Consul, An American Dream (world premiere), and The Turn of the Screw for Seattle Opera; A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ariadne auf Naxos, L’enfant et les sortilèges, Gianni Schicchi, The Turn of the Screw, Falstaff, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Don Pasquale, The Tragedy of Carmen, La serva padrona, Rita, Trouble in Tahiti, and Tatyana’s Letter (an adaptation of Eugene Onegin), Werther and Un giorno di regno for the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program.
His upcoming projects include a production of The Classical Style (Stucky/Denk) for Fort Worth Symphony, conducted by Robert Spano, joining the Los Angeles Opera in January 2027 to direct the Young Artist scenes program, and promotion and production of a new one-act opera based on Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man (Stępień/Hollander), for which he directed the initial workshop in the spring of 2025.
Recent productions include La bohème for Palm Beach Opera, a revival of his celebrated version of Massenet’s Cendrillon for San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a 2025 revival of Le nozze di Figaro at Washington National Opera. Over the past year, he appeared onstage as The Duke of Windsor in the première of Pauline Oliveros’s The Library of Maps at Long Beach Opera, and as Mr. Maraczek in She Loves Me for Opera Saratoga.
After returning to Seattle Opera in Spring 2022 for Le nozze di Figaro, Peter Kazaras directed a new production of Eugene Onegin for Music Academy of the West. Other recent productions include The Thieving Magpie and An American Tragedy at Glimmerglass Festival; Samson and Delilah, La bohème (original production and revival), Le nozze di Figaro (2016), Il barbiere di Siviglia at Washington National Opera (last three of these productions broadcast to Opera in the Outfield); as well as additional productions of La bohème at Dallas Opera and LA Opera. In 2018 he scored a triumph with a new production of Korngold’s first opera, Der Ring des Polykrates, at The Dallas Opera. In the summer of 2018, Kazaras directed a highly praised production of A Quiet Place at Tanglewood as part of the Bernstein at 100 Centennial celebrations.
In Spring of 2024, Kazaras’s final production for Opera UCLA before his retirement was the world premiere of Richard Danielpour’s The Grand Hotel Tartarus, a collaboration with the Department of Theater from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. That collaboration with design students and faculty at TFT was a hallmark achievement of his time at UCLA. Recent productions for Opera UCLA include a new production of Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress as well as the world premiere of Lost Childhood, by Jan Hamer and Mary Azrael, based on the memoir by Yehuda Nir.
As an operatic tenor, Kazaras performed worldwide, appearing at The Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Seattle Opera, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Dallas Opera, San Francisco Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Opera Omaha, Vienna State Opera, L’Opéra National de Paris, L’Opéra de Nice, Grand Théåtre de Genève, New Israeli Opera, Wellington International Festival of the Arts (New Zealand), Canadian Opera Company, and elsewhere. He premiered several new works, including Corigliano’s The Ghosts of Versailles (Metropolitan Opera), Bernstein’s A Quiet Place and Tippett’s New Year (Houston Grand Opera) and Picker’s Thérèse Raquin (Dallas Opera, L’Opéra de Montréal, San Diego Opera). Conductors he has worked as a singer with include Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Daniel Barenboim, James Conlon, John Nelson, Armin Jordan, Robert Spano, Gerard Schwarz, and Asher Fisch.
Peter Kazaras has also taught design classes at the UCLA School of Theater, Film, and Television. A repeat panelist on the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera Quiz, Professor Kazaras is also in demand as a judge for international competitions, including the International Wagner Competition at Seattle Opera, the first Elardo International Competition in New York, Marilyn Horne’s competition at Music Academy of the West (twice), the Les Azuriales Festival in Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat in France, and has adjudicated twice at The Juilliard School. He has twice adjudicated the Corbett Opera Competition at CCM, at the National Opera Association competition, and has frequently served as a judge for the District and Regional Auditions of the Metropolitan Opera National Council auditions.
A graduate of Harvard College and New York University School of Law, he resides in Los Angeles with his psychotherapist husband and their silver miniature poodle Luca.
