Peter Sellars has gained international renown for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces, created collaboratively with an extraordinary range of artists. His works explore issues that connect the contemporary and the timeless, with an understanding of art’s power as a means of social action and moral expression. His many notable productions include his creations with composer John Adams, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Tree, The Gospel According to the Other Mary and Girls of the Golden West.

Peter has led major arts festivals including the 1990 and 1993 Los Angeles Festivals, the 2002 Adelaide Festival of Arts and New Crowned Hope, a month-long festival in Vienna in celebration of the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, for which he invited artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in the fields of music, film, theater, dance, the visual arts and architecture. Recently, he staged Mozart’s Idomeneo for the Salzburg Festival.

Peter is also a distinguished professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/ Dance and the director of the Boethius Initiative at UCLA; a resident curator of the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado; and a former mentor for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. His many awards include a MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, the Polar Music Prize, and the designation of “Artist of the Year” by Musical America.