Robert Israel

Set & Costume Designer

An elected fellow of the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences, Robert Israel has created environments for many of the world’s great opera companies. For the 1996 world premiere of Catan’s Florencia en el Amazonas at the Houston Grand Opera, Israel created the sets which were later seen at Los Angeles and Seattle. Other theater and opera companies he has worked with include the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna Staatsoper, Paris Opera, Bavarian State Opera and English National Opera. His costume drawings for Glass’ Satyagraha are part of the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Recent productions include Berg’s Lulu in Japan, Britten’s Peter Grimes in Zurich, and, at the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In 2006, Israel will design a new production of Verdi’s Macbeth for Seattle Opera.