1. Peter Sellars was born on September 27,1957 and is an American theatre director, noted for his unique stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays.
25 Facts About Peter Sellars
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Peter Sellars has been described as a key figure of theatre and opera for the last 50 years.
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Peter Sellars was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.
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Later, Peter Sellars studied theatre and related arts in Japan, China, and India.
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In 1981, Peter Sellars worked on a project with Andy Warhol and Lewis Allen that would create a traveling stage show with a life-sized animatronic robot in the exact image of Warhol.
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Peter Sellars's productions included Pericles, Prince of Tyre and a staging of The Lighthouse, with music by British composer Peter Maxwell Davies.
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In 1984, Peter Sellars was named director and manager of the American National Theater at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC at the age of 26; he held this post until 1986.
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Peter Sellars directed productions of Idiot's Delight by Robert Sherwood, and Sophocles's Ajax, as adapted by Robert Auletta.
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Peter Sellars was Artistic Director of the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals.
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Peter Sellars produced the three operas by Mozart with libretti by da Ponte, Cosi fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni, in collaboration with Emmanuel Music and its Artistic Director, Craig Smith.
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Peter Sellars co-wrote Jean-Luc Godard's 1987 film of the Shakespeare play King Lear, and appeared as William Shaksper Junior the Fifth.
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Peter Sellars staged Handel's opera Giulio Cesare and oratorio Theodora, and Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, in addition to I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky and The Peony Pavilion.
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Peter Sellars was the librettist for the opera Doctor Atomic composed by John Adams.
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In late 2006, Peter Sellars organized the New Crowned Hope Festival in Vienna, Austria as Artistic Director.
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Peter Sellars directed the premieres of Saariaho's oratorio La Passion de Simone and Adams's opera A Flowering Tree, in Vienna.
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In 2007, Peter Sellars delivered the "State of Cinema" address at the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival on April 29.
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Peter Sellars introduced the screenings of Mahamat Saleh Haroun's Daratt and Garin Nugroho's Opera Jawa, two of the New Crowned Hope films.
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An extensive commentary by Peter Sellars is included in the 2007 DVD of Grigori Kozintsev's King Lear by Facets Video.
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In early 2009, Peter Sellars co-curated a contemporary art exhibition of work by Ethiopian artist Elias Sime at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, a kunsthalle in Santa Monica, California.
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Peter Sellars's Othello, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Iago, was produced in the Fall 2009 season at New York City's Public Theater.
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In 2011, Peter Sellars directed a production of John Adams's opera Nixon in China for New York's Metropolitan Opera.
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Peter Sellars wrote the libretto for John Adams's opera Girls of the Golden West.
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In 2019, Peter Sellars gave the keynote address at the Salzburg Festival.
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Peter Sellars is a professor at the University of California Los Angeles.
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In 1998, Peter Sellars was awarded the Erasmus Prize for "combining in his original creations the European and American cultural traditions".