Visit Mo Zhou's website at https://www.mo-zhou.com

Mo Zhou

Originally from China, Mo Zhou is a stage director whose international career spans all artistic disciplines including opera, theater, musical theater, dance, and film.

Equally passionate about invigorating the classical canon and spearheading new works, Zhou’s productions have been seen at Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin, the Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle in Hamburg, National Centre for the Performing Arts in China, Santa Fe Opera, Florida Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, the Juilliard School, and WP Theatre. She has also worked as a member of the directing staff at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, the Dallas Opera, and Des Moines Metro Opera.

Zhou makes her debut with Minnesota Opera in the 2022-23 season with a new production of Handel’s Rinaldo. She also directs Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi alongside Michael Ching’s sequel, Buoso’s Ghost for Florida Grand Opera, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride with Boston Baroque, La bohème at Music Academy, and Don Giovanni at The School of Music, Theater and Dance at University of Michigan – Ann Arbor, where she joined the faculty in the fall of 2022. For the 2023-24 season she will stage the world premiere of The Big Swim from composer Meilina Tsui and librettist Melisa Tien for Houston Grand Opera.

Ms. Zhou completed her training as the James Marcus Opera Directing Fellow at The Juilliard School, the Directing Fellow at Wolf Trap Opera, 2050 Artistic Fellow with New York Theater Workshop, Time Warner Directing Fellow with Women’s Project Theater and as an Apprentice Stage Director with both Merola Opera Program in San Francisco and the Glimmerglass Festival in Upstate New York. She is also a winner of the OPERA America Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Prize.

She has previously taught and worked at the Juilliard School, Manhattan School of Music, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and the New School of Drama.

Ms. Zhou earned her BA in English and Theater at Bowdoin College and her MFA in Stage Directing at Columbia University where she was a Shubert Presidential Fellowship recipient. She also holds a Certificate in Diversity and Inclusion from Cornell University.

 

 

 

Current & Upcoming Performances

Upcoming Performance Schedule Coming Soon

Past Performances

11
February
2023
Gianni Schicchi/Buoso’s Ghost
Stage Director
Florida Grand Opera
Fort Lauderdale, FL
9
February
2023
Gianni Schicchi/Buoso’s Ghost
Stage Director
Florida Grand Opera
Fort Lauderdale, FL
31
January
2023
Gianni Schicchi/Buoso’s Ghost
Stage Director
Florida Grand Opera
Miami, FL
29
January
2023
Gianni Schicchi/Buoso’s Ghost
Stage Director
Florida Grand Opera
Miami, FL
28
January
2023
Gianni Schicchi/Buoso’s Ghost
Stage Director
Florida Grand Opera
Miami, FL
3
December
2022
Rinaldo
Stage Director
Minnesota Opera
Minneapolis, MN
2
December
2022
Rinaldo
Stage Director
Minnesota Opera
Minneapolis, MN
27
November
2022
Rinaldo
Stage Director
Minnesota Opera
Minneapolis, MN
26
November
2022
Rinaldo
Stage Director
Minnesota Opera
Minneapolis, MN
20
November
2022
Rinaldo
Stage Director
Minnesota Opera
Minneapolis, MN
19
November
2022
Rinaldo
Stage Director
Minnesota Opera
Minneapolis, MN

“Mo Zhou represents the next generation of opera artists combining impeccable schooling with already extensive professional experience, knowledge, and passion for the art of opera.”

— Paula Wang in NY Times Chinese Edition

GIANNI SCHICCHI/BUOSO’S GHOST – Florida Grand Opera 2023

“Operatic comedy is serious business to get right. Saturday night’s opening of Florida Grand Opera’s double bill of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi and composer Michael Ching’s sequel Buoso’s Ghost at the Arsht Center proved that point. With adroit staging, terrific singing from top to bottom by a large cast and an eye-filling production, this pairing is both potent theater and delightful entertainment.”

“Mo Zhou’s deft staging brought out the twin bill’s fun. The opening scene, as the Buoso relatives scavenge the house and turn it upside down to find the will between fake tears, drew much laughter from the audience.” —Lawrence Budmen, South Florida Classical Review

“The production directed by Mo Zhou is suffused with humorous touches; her cast is clearly having a great time playing just one millimeter short of leaping over-the-top with plenty of eye-popping, grimaces and vaudevillian physicality.” Bill Hirschman, Florida Theater On Stage

RINALDO – Minnesota Opera 2022

“Director Mo Zhou transplanted Handel’s tale of the crusades to 1980s Wall Street in a production wonderfully staged, sung and memorably costumed, christening the company’s intimate North Loop space.” —Rob Hubbard, Star Tribune (Minnesota’s Top 10 Classical Highlights of 2022)

DON GIOVANNI – Florida Grand Opera 2019

“Zhou’s production successfully shone a spotlight on the inner lives of the women whose lives are uprooted by Giovanni’s violence, greed, and rage…We should feel uncomfortable watching these moments on stage, period.”— Carly Gordon in Schmopera

“Zhou had soprano Elizabeth de Trejo stand center stage and address the audience directly…[s]peaking out like so many contemporary women at the trials of powerful men, her testimony was chilling.”— Celeste Landeros in Opera News

“Stage director Mo Zhou framed the opera with a shrewd eye, especially abandoning cliché for tenderness in staging the couples scenes – encouraging a soft hand to the cheek, a playful gesture, a cheeky smile. She mined the relationship between Giovanni and Leporello, bringing out the subtleties in their personalities to deepen and widen their bond.”— Steve Gladstone in MiamiArtZine

Mo Zhou, making her FGO debut, has taken the #MeToo movement into account and come up with a Giovanni closer in spirit to the text: A man entirely made of id, driven by a thirst for sexual conquest, and glorying in his ability to carry it off so successfully.— Greg Stepanich in Palm Beach Arts Paper

MEROLA GRAND FINALE – Merola Opera Program 2015

“In the direction of apprentice stage director Mo Zhou, of Nanjing, the evening unfolded with simplicity, speed and continuity perhaps none of the 30 previous grand finales I’ve ever seen could match: a thoroughly professional job.”— Janos Gereben in The San Francisco Examiner

“Zhou, staging all of the scenes on a single unit set, supplied imaginative touches.”— Georgia Rowe in San Jose Mercury News

“Merola Apprentice Stage Director Mo Zhou should also be praised for keeping the action flowing and well balanced.”— Paul Duclos in Bay Crossings

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