Emily Bishai is currently in her first year as the Resident Artist Stage Director at Minnesota Opera. Previously based in the UK, her directing work this past season included a new, contemporary script adaptation and fully-staged production of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale for RWCMD REPCo/USW Dance, the premiere of The Y Knot, a new children’s opera by Julia Plaut for the 2020 Atmospheres Festival (unfortunately cancelled due to COVID-19), and a contemporary double bill of Thea Musgrave’s Mary, Queen of Scots and Victoria Bond’s Mrs. President for NYC’s Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble. Additionally, she joined Welsh National Opera as an assistant staff director for their 2020 spring season’s revival production and tour of Tobias Richter’s The Marriage of Figaro, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden for the 2019 revival of Kasper Holten’s Don Giovanni, and Dell’Arte Opera Ensemble for Caccini’s La liberazione di Ruggiero. As her final engagement of the 19-20 season, she would have returned to RWCMD to assist on the UK premiere of Adamo’s Little Women at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, but this production, unfortunately, was another of the many cancelled due to the coronavirus.
In addition to her directing work, Emily is an active writer and maintains an ongoing collaborative relationship with award-winning, UK-based composer Derri Joseph Lewis. Their one-act opera, Spinning Jenny, also with co-composer Tayla-Leigh Payne, was premiered at Cardiff’s Atmospheres Festival in 2019. Their most recent collaboration, Cane fires from the cabin of a plane, a song cycle for mezzo-soprano and piano, will be performed at the 2021 Ludlow English Song Weekend.
Growing up in the USA and South Africa, Emily fostered, from an early age, a deep love for stories and the many ways of telling them. She originally began directing as a filmmaker, but soon discovered her preference for live theater mediums, especially opera. After completing her undergraduate studies in Social Anthropology and Music at Harvard University, she trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama’s David Seligman School, where she received an MA with Distinction in Opera Directing. Emily is also an alumnus of the Juilliard School’s Professional Apprentice Program in Vocal Arts. In previous seasons, she has worked as a director with the Aspen Music Festival, Barrow Group, Boston Youth Symphony, Harvard Early Music Festival, and Harvard College Opera, and has held administrative positions with the Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and Houston Grand Opera. A lifelong musician, Emily is still an avid violist and enjoys playing chamber music with friends in her spare time. When she’s not writing or in rehearsal, she can often be found hiking, doing the NYT crossword, riding her bike, cooking, or losing hours of her life to Wikipedia holes.