Described as “a star of stage directing” with “a gift for translating classic symbolism into familiar detail” and work that is “transfixingly personal,” Eve Summer returns this 2025-26 season to Opera Columbus, Tulsa Opera, Resonance Works, The Opera Institute at Boston University, The Princeton Festival, and Opera Grand Rapids to direct new productions of La traviata, The Pirates of Penzance, Kamala Sankaram and Kelley Rourke’s The Jungle Book, Romeo et Juliette, Madama Butterfly, and H.M.S. Pinafore, as well as debuting at Odyssey Opera with Menotti’s The Last Savage.
Selected directing credits include Trouble in Tahiti at the Glimmerglass Festival; Tosca at The Princeton Festival; Ariodante at Boston Baroque; Cosi fan tutte, Les Mamelles de Tirésias, The Seven Deadly Sins and Albert Herring at Curtis Opera Theatre; Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince at Tulsa Opera; Don Giovanni at Opera Carolina; Rigoletto, Tosca, and Don Giovanni at Opera Columbus; The Barber of Seville at Opera Saratoga; The Tales of Hoffmann and Lizbeth at Opera Orlando; Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Don Giovanni, L’elisir d’amore, The Pirates of Penzance, Così fan tutte, Le Docteur Miracle, and The Mikado at Opera Grand Rapids; Musto and Campbell’s Volpone at the A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute at UNCSA; The Pearl Fishers at Opera Tampa; Le nozze di Figaro at Knoxville Opera, dell’Arte Opera Ensemble, Mobile Opera, Kaliope Opera, and Varna International Music Festival, La donna del lago at Resonance Works; La clemenza di Tito, Adamo’s Little Women, and Musto and Campbell’s Later The Same Evening at the Opera Institute at Boston University; Xerxes for Connecticut Early Music Festival, Carmen for MassOpera; Suor Angelica with the Boston Symphony Orchestra; Così fan tutte for Connecticut Lyric Opera, Les contes d’Hoffmann, La Bohème, The Pearl Fishers, and The Magic Flute at Opera in Williamsburg, Aida and Lucia di Lammermoor at Boheme Opera New Jersey; The Magic Flute The Hartt School at University of Hartford, and the world premiere of Larry Bell’s Holy Ghosts at the Berklee Performance Center.
A former professional ballet dancer and choreographer, Eve choreographs her own productions in addition to credits such as a commission to choreograph a new ballet, Jeanne’s Fantasy, by composer Mark Warhol for the premiere with Contrapose Dance and Fort Point Theatre Channel, Elektra at Des Moines Metro Opera, and Falstaff at Opera Colorado. She’s been described as having a “gift for banishing stodginess from an art form too often seen as fossilized and elitist” and her theater productions have included The Merry Wives of Windsor, Extremities, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Woolgatherer, ‘Art,’ Two Gentlemen of Verona, and her own play Neighbors, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Thomas Berger.
