Maria Todaro
ABOUT
Born into a family of opera singers, Maria Todaro grew up immersed in music, theater and the visual arts. That early inheritance shaped a career distinguished by artistic versatility, imaginative leadership and a profound belief in opera’s power to connect cultures and transform communities.
Todaro is an internationally active stage director, arts executive, fight choreographer, stunt performer, writer, conductor and educator. A former opera singer herself, she is deeply committed to developing the next generation of artists. She currently serves as CEO and General Director of Florida Grand Opera and as General Director of the Hudson Valley International Festival of the Voice, formerly the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, which she co-founded in 2009 in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York.
In November 2023, Todaro was called upon to serve as Interim CEO of Florida Grand Opera, with a mandate to restore and revitalize the historic company where Luciano Pavarotti made his American debut in 1965. She was officially appointed CEO and General Director in 2024, assuming responsibility for the company’s artistic vision, institutional strategy and administrative and production operations.
Under her leadership, FGO has entered a period of renewed momentum and civic engagement. The company has received recognition from the City of Miami and launched several innovative programs, including Voices of Wellness, an initiative developed in partnership with Baptist Health and medical specialists, including physicians and neurologists. The program explores the healing potential of the human voice and trains singers to offer meaningful support in moments of trauma and crisis, particularly for veterans, active-duty military personnel, first responders, healthcare professionals and others affected by post-traumatic stress.
A passionate advocate for cultural diplomacy, Todaro has also expanded FGO’s international relationships, building partnerships with opera companies and cultural institutions around the world. Her leadership reflects a conviction that opera can serve not only as an art form, but also as a bridge among nations, traditions and communities.
In 2026, Todaro directed and designed the costumes for Tosca at the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago, with sets by renowned designer Carlo Centolavigna. The production was acclaimed for honoring Puccini’s tradition while introducing original theatrical elements and a contemporary dramatic perspective.
Her work at Florida Grand Opera has also included a highly successful production of Carmen, reimagined in Franco-era Spain and presented to audiences in Miami and Fort Lauderdale.
In 2022, Todaro opened Minnesota Opera’s season with L’Amant Anonyme, the exceptional and rarely performed opera by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. She relocated the action to 18th-century Guadeloupe, honoring both the remarkable Black composer and his librettist, Félicité de Genlis. In 2023, she created a new version of the production for The Atlanta Opera, featuring a fully revised and newly translated libretto by Todaro and a substantially reimagined staging concept.
In January 2023, she directed Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore for Hawai‘i Opera Theatre, setting the story on a Hawaiian sugarcane plantation. Her production of Le nozze di Figaro in 2022 was praised for its “fresh take and whip-smart humor.” The preceding season, she created a spirited production of La Cenerentola set during the Roaring Twenties. Todaro designed both the sets and costumes for these productions.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Todaro achieved what many believed impossible. In 2020, she conceived and directed one of the first live, drive-in-style opera performances in the United States: a fully socially distanced, science-fiction-inspired production of Tosca, presented in Kingston, New York, by the Festival of the Voice. Her exploration of virtual reality, volumetric technology and augmented reality opened the door to a radical reimagining of the opera while preserving its emotional truth. As Opera magazine observed, “Todaro’s concept worked because she stayed true to the drama at its core.”
In 2021, she created a distinctive production of Pagliacci set in the American Wild West, complete with horses, carriages and circus performers, for the Festival of the Voice in Phoenicia, New York.
Her 2019 season included Tosca with the New Jersey Festival Orchestra; her Spanish Civil War interpretation of Carmen for Fargo-Moorhead Opera; and a groundbreaking production of L’elisir d’amore, set in Ghana and performed by an entirely African American cast, for the Festival of the Voice.
Todaro made her American stage-directing debut in 2015 with Cavalleria rusticana for the Westfield Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of British conductor David Wroe. Following the production’s success, she was immediately invited to return the following season to direct La bohème.
She subsequently served as assistant director at Michigan Opera Theatre, assisting Ron Daniels on Carmen and working as fight choreographer while assisting Bernard Uzan on Cyrano de Bergerac. Her other productions have included a visually striking Madama Butterfly for the New Jersey Festival Orchestra and a widely acclaimed Carmen for the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice, starring Ginger Costa-Jackson in the title role.
Among Todaro’s most personal creative endeavors is Les Trois Mousquetaires, an opera inspired by Alexandre Dumas’s celebrated novel, for which she wrote the libretto, with music by Mitchell Bach.
Her future projects include the development of a new opera exploring the life and legacy of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, as well as a scheduled production of Bellini’s Norma at Teatro La Fenice in Venice in October 2027.
Across her work as an artist and executive, Maria Todaro combines respect for operatic tradition with fearless theatrical imagination. Whether restoring a historic institution, reinterpreting a masterpiece, developing young artists or creating new cultural alliances, she remains guided by one central conviction: opera must be alive, relevant and capable of speaking powerfully to the world we inhabit today.