Lotfi Mansouri (Stage Director)
Tehran, Iran

Highlights: 1988-2001: Sixty productions as General Director of San Francisco Opera; from 1976 until 1988 served as General Director of Canadian Opera Company; from 1965 until 1976 worked as Head Stage Director for Geneva Opera and for four years in the early 1970s he also staged productions for the Tehran Opera in Iran. Mr. Mansouri, awarded the Chevalier Order of Arts and Letters by the French government, has produced and directed in prestigious venues including Milan’s La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Washington National Opera, Santa Fe Opera (where he directed for seven consecutive seasons), Vancouver Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia, San Diego Opera, Zürich Opera, Verona, Naples, Palermo, New York City Opera, Houston Grand Opera, and – of course – The Dallas Opera, where he made his company debut in 1974 directing I puritani, returning to direct Handel’s Samson (1976), Der Rosenkavalier (1982), Così fan tutte (1984), Don Carlo (1988) and our 1989 production of The Merry Widow. Film credits include operatic portions of the Academy Award-winning Moonstruck. Mr. Mansouri, who studied at UCLA and earned a B.A. in Psychology, became an American citizen in 1960 and both taught and staged productions at several West Coast colleges and universities before accepting a post as Resident Stage Director of the Zürich Opera House. His autobiography, Lotfi Mansouri: An Operatic Life was published in 1982.