Peter Sellars

The story of the Miami Police Department's vice squad and its efforts to end drug trafficking and prostitution, centered on the unlikely partnership of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs - who first meet when Tubbs is undercover in a drug cartel.

Robert McCall is a former agent of a secret government agency who is now running his own private crime fighting operation where he fashions himself as "The Equalizer." It is a service for victims of the system who have exhausted all possible means of seeking justice and have nowhere to go. McCall promises to even out the odds for them.

Inspired by the physicists who built the Soviet atomic bomb, the film DAU follows a brilliant Greek-born physicist from 1928 through four tumultuous decades in the USSR. Driven to uncover the laws of the universe, the idealistic Dau is drawn into state service to help create one of history’s deadliest weapons. Inside a secret research institute, life is governed by scientific ambition, power, surveillance and privilege. As his autonomy erodes, Dau seeks freedom beyond his marriage through a succession of affairs, gradually losing both himself and his capacity to love. At once an intimate portrait of a man in pursuit of happiness and freedom and a vast fresco of a society founded on violence and ideology, DAU traces the small compromises that shape a life and alter the course of history.

A descendant of Shakespeare tries to restore his plays in a world rebuilding itself after the Chernobyl catastrophe obliterates most of human civilization.

This artful and intimate meditation on the legendary storyteller examines her life, her works, and the powerful themes she has confronted throughout her literary career. Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, history, the United States, and the human condition.

Considered to be one of his most brilliant creations, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a perfect masterpiece for the two enfants terribles of classical music and opera staging, conductor Teodor Currentzis and stage director Peter Sellars. Joined by the exceptional voices of Russell Thomas, Paula Murrihy, Ying Fang, and Nicole Chevalier, this is a one-of-a-kind performance of the score in the city where its creator was born!

The story of the Miami Police Department's vice squad and its efforts to end drug trafficking and prostitution, centered on the unlikely partnership of Sonny Crockett and Ricardo Tubbs - who first meet when Tubbs is undercover in a drug cartel.

Robert McCall is a former agent of a secret government agency who is now running his own private crime fighting operation where he fashions himself as "The Equalizer." It is a service for victims of the system who have exhausted all possible means of seeking justice and have nowhere to go. McCall promises to even out the odds for them.

Considered to be one of his most brilliant creations, Mozart’s Idomeneo is a perfect masterpiece for the two enfants terribles of classical music and opera staging, conductor Teodor Currentzis and stage director Peter Sellars. Joined by the exceptional voices of Russell Thomas, Paula Murrihy, Ying Fang, and Nicole Chevalier, this is a one-of-a-kind performance of the score in the city where its creator was born!

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion with the Berliner Philharmoniker and Sir Simon Rattle was one of the outstanding events of the past season. As before with the St Matthew Passion, star director Peter Sellars succeeded in creating a staging which made the spiritual and dramatic content of the Passion story even more intensive. The New York Times also praised the “brilliant and energetic” playing of the orchestra, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the “haunting, almost unsurpassable singing of all those involved.”

This production was originally staged for the Pepsico Summerfare Festival, The International Performing Arts Festival of the State University of New York at Purchase. Leaving the lyrics in their original Italian, acclaimed American director Peter Sellars transports Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's "Don Giovanni" to a modern-day metropolis, nestling the opera's beloved characters among the brownstones of New York City's Harlem. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series that also includes "Le Nozze di Figaro" and "'Così Fan Tutte."

John Adams’s mesmerizing score, in the powerful production of Penny Woolcock, tells the story of one of the pivotal moments in human history—the creation of the atomic bomb. Conducted by Alan Gilbert in his Met debut, this gripping opera presents the human face of the scientists, military men, and others who were involved in the project, as they wrestled with the implications of their work. Baritone Gerald Finley gives a powerful star turn in the title role as the brilliant J. Robert Oppenheimer.

How do we live together in an age of conflict? How do you heal a divided and angry people? In their 2017 production of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, Peter Sellars and Teodor Currentzis examine these questions through the story of a warrior-emperor who brings peace to his divided land and pardons his own would-be assassins. Written under a time crunch (legend has it that it was written in only 18 days, although it is likely an exaggeration) during the last year of Mozart’s life, the opera is based on a libretto written more than half a century earlier by Pietro Metastasio. It was commissioned for the coronation of Leopold II as King of Bohemia, and received its first public performance at the Estates Theatre in Prague on September 6, 1791.

A film featuring singer Ganavya, calligrapher Wang Dongling, and dancer Michael Schumacher who during COVID lockdown, created an hour-long meditation on the visionary, radiant Vimalakirti Sutra, a Buddhist text from the first century CE. A businessman, having chosen a path of illness towards spiritual awakening, teaches the visitors at his deathbed with depth and penetration: how to face life with no illusions. The artists, across three continents and three artforms, interpret the text individually and collaboratively, sharing a story of acute pain, deep healing, and radical transformation.

A film featuring singer Ganavya, calligrapher Wang Dongling, and dancer Michael Schumacher who during COVID lockdown, created an hour-long meditation on the visionary, radiant Vimalakirti Sutra, a Buddhist text from the first century CE. A businessman, having chosen a path of illness towards spiritual awakening, teaches the visitors at his deathbed with depth and penetration: how to face life with no illusions. The artists, across three continents and three artforms, interpret the text individually and collaboratively, sharing a story of acute pain, deep healing, and radical transformation.

The Mozart opera, directed by Peter Sellars, and set in modern Harlem. Sellars cast twin brothers to sing Leporello and Giovanni.

Headlined by Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White and orchestrated by the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra, this Nativity oratorio from composer John Adams tells the magical story of the birth of Christ. Conducted by renowned maestro Kent Nagano, this moving experience draws on both Old World and New World sources to re-create this influential story, highlighted by Adams’s trademark minimalism and melody.

Headlined by Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White and orchestrated by the Berlin German Symphony Orchestra, this Nativity oratorio from composer John Adams tells the magical story of the birth of Christ. Conducted by renowned maestro Kent Nagano, this moving experience draws on both Old World and New World sources to re-create this influential story, highlighted by Adams’s trademark minimalism and melody.

Sir Simon Rattle was in no doubt: the performance of the St Matthew Passion which he realised together with the Berliner Philharmoniker and the Rundfunkchor Berlin in 2010 was for him “the single most important thing we ever did here”. Critics around the world agreed. They praised the semi-staged “ritualization” by American star-director Peter Sellars, as well as the outstanding musical performances by the soloists, including Magdalena Kožená, Christian Gerhaher, Thomas Quasthoff and Mark Padmore as the Evangelist.

Featuring music instead of any dialogue and set in a near Kafkaesque future, this loose remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari follows a bureaucrat whom mysterious Dr. Ramirez and his hideous sidekick want as their latest victim.

Featuring music instead of any dialogue and set in a near Kafkaesque future, this loose remake of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari follows a bureaucrat whom mysterious Dr. Ramirez and his hideous sidekick want as their latest victim.

A superb adaptation of Purcell's the Indian Queen, staged and directed by Peter Sellars and performed in 2013 at the Teatro Real in Madrid. Peters Sellars combines John Dryden and Robert Howard's libretto with a short-story written by the Nicaraguan writer Rosario Aguilar, La niña blanca y los pájaros sin pies.

A BBC documentary about a pre-rehearsal workshop held in New York prior to the Goodman Theater’s 1994 production of The Merchant of Venice, directed by Peter Sellars in Chicago.

The European premiere of the opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars, in a co-production of the San Francisco Opera (where the work premiered), the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and De Nederlandse Opera. The plot focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared.

The European premiere of the opera by the contemporary American composer John Adams, with libretto by Peter Sellars, in a co-production of the San Francisco Opera (where the work premiered), the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and De Nederlandse Opera. The plot focuses on the great stress and anxiety experienced by those at Los Alamos while the test of the first atomic bomb (the "Trinity" test) was being prepared.

This is the 2004 version of Kaija Saariaho's opera performed by the Finnish National Opera and conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.

This DVD and Blu-ray derive from the world premiere performances, at the Dutch National Opera in 2016, of Only the Sound Remains, a Japanese-inspired double bill by Kaija Saariaho. Her first opera, L’Amour de loin, has captivated audiences around the world, and she composed Only the Sound Remains with the ethereal tones of Philippe Jaroussky in mind. Appropriately, the French countertenor plays two supernatural characters, an angel and a ghost. The fisherman and priest who encounter them are both sung by baritone Davone Tines, while the production is the work of the celebrated director Peter Sellars.

Motivated by the love that bound him to Mathilda Wesendonck, Richard Wagner’s composition of Tristan und Isolde goes far beyond any simple operatic gesture. Peter Sellars’ production pours oil onto this troubled sea of emotions in an almost dematerialised setting bared of all earthly contingencies whilst Bill Viola presents the lovers’ initiatory quest for nirvana in videos detached from the stage, suspended like altarpieces.

Anna I and Anna II set out on a seven year journey that takes them through a series of varied life experiences while their parents and two brothers remain behind.

John Adams’s groundbreaking work vividly brings to life US President Nixon’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China. Peter Sellars’s Metropolitan Opera production, based on his 1987 world-premiere staging, features choreography by Mark Morris and stars James Maddalena as Nixon, Robert Brubaker as Chairman Mao, Janis Kelly as First Lady Pat Nixon, Russell Braun as Chinese Premier Chou En-lai, and Kathleen Kim as Chiang Ch’ing, Mao’s wife. From the pomp of the public displays to the intimacy of the protagonists most private moments, Adams, Sellars and librettist Alice Goodman reveal the real characters behind the headlines in this landmark American opera.

A return to its roots for Castor et Pollux, Jean-Philippe Rameau’s lyric tragedy first performed in 1737 at the Académie royale and inspired by the mythological episode of the Gemini. Rarely performed in its original version – the score was reworked by Rameau himself in 1754 –, this daring work plays on contrasts and expressiveness, as in the famous “Tristes apprêts”. The aria is sung by Télaïre mourning the death of her fiancé Castor, killed in battle, before his twin brother Pollux descends into the Underworld to ask his father, Jupiter, to bring him back to life. While this opera celebrates brotherly love, its prologue poses an essential question for director Peter Sellars: how do you stop a war and its attendant hatred and resentment?

Though performed in the original Italian, Peter Sellars' production of Cosi fan tutte relocates Mozart's comedy of love to the neon-and-chrome glare of a seaside diner, mirroring the turbulent world of late-twentieth-century America.

Director Peter Sellars helms this provocative adaptation of George Frideric Handel's opera "Giulio Cesare," sung in the original Italian by soprano Susan Larson (who plays Cleopatra) and countertenor Jeffrey Gall (in the role of Julius Caesar) but set in a very different locale: a futuristic Middle East. Sellars personally wrote the English subtitles included in this version to match the tone he intended for his vision.

Iolanta is a one act lyric opera, sung in Russian, by Tchaikovsky. Performed in the style of a nineteenth-century Italian melodrama, the scenes have a recitative introduction followed by a single arioso, aria, duet or chorus. Persephone is a three act melodrama, sung in French, by Stravinsky. It is a story of regeneration, symbolised in Sellars use of dancers from the Cambodian dance company, Amrita Performing Arts. Peter Sellars, one of the most innovative creators on today's stage, has linked these two productions by using the same stage setting, instantly archaic yet modern, and lit by rich colours to define the journey from darkness to light.

In this modern-day presentation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's beloved opera "Le Nozze di Figaro," acclaimed American director Peter Sellars moves the action from a castle in Seville to a Trump Tower penthouse on New York City's Fifth Avenue. Sellars's contemporary retelling of a classic musical tale is one of three performances in a Mozart series the others are "Don Giovanni" and "'Così Fan Tutte."

The Peter Sellars production of Handel's "Theodora", recorded live at the Glyndebourne Festival in May 1996. Dawn Upshaw stars as Theodora, with David Daniels as Didymus, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson as Irene, Richard Croft as Septimius, and Frode Olsen as Valens. William Christie conducts the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

A four-hour plus video production inspired by Richard Wagner's oeuvre "Tristan und Isolde" and projected during the opera premiere in Paris, in partnership with Peter Sellars as artistic collaborator, and conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Thriller, intimate play, relationship drama: Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande is all that and much more. The New York Times wrote about this performance with Simon Rattle: “The result exceeds even the expectations raised by the Bach Passions. Peter Sellars perfectly conveys the human essence of Maurice Maeterlinck's drama. The singers are as great as one could wish for.