Elkhanah Pulitzer is a highly esteemed opera director known for her bold, nuanced stage direction that explores the intersection of music and theater through innovation and hybridized forms, creating compelling and visually stunning productions. Recent projects include directing John Adams’ Antony and Cleopatra, which premiered at San Francisco Opera in September 2022; she makes her Metropolitan Opera directorial debut with this production in May 2025. Other recent highlights include a new production of Handel’s Julius Caesar with Opera Theatre of St. Louis in June 2024, and European productions of David Lang’s prisoner of the state, which premiered at the New York Philharmonic in 2019.
Additionally this season, Pulitzer continues her collaboration with cellist Alisa Weilerstein directing “Fragments,” a groundbreaking, multi-year project for solo cello that weaves together the 36 movements of Bach's solo cello suites with 27 newly commissioned works. The second and third installments of “Fragments” will be performed at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall on January 21 and May 20, 2025 respectively.
Past projects include a live tour of Esperanza Spalding’s album 12 Little Spells; and DIORAMA, an art installation at the I.O.U. in San Francisco. Pulitzer has directed projects with the Los Angeles Philharmonic including John Adams’ Nixon in China and Leonard Bernstein’s Mass, the latter of which was also staged at the Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center. She has also directed John Adams’ The Gospel According to the Other Mary at the San Francisco Symphony, and Lucia di Lammermoor and Judas Maccabaeus at Los Angeles Opera.
Pulitzer directed Wagner’s Flying Dutchman at San Francisco Opera in 2013 and returned to serve as Artistic Curator of SF Opera Lab, an experimental chamber opera two-year program from 2015-17, where she developed the mission, brand, and programming. She has directed multiple productions at West Edge Opera, among them Alban Berg’s Lulu, Thomas Ades’ Powder Her Face, and Luca Francesconi’s Quartett. She has collaborated on next-generation projects with Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Theater of Saint Louis, and the Canadian Opera Company. Theater directing credits include work with Impact Theater, Cutting Ball, Riverside Theater, and Ensemble Theater Company.
Pulitzer was honored with the Opera America Success Award for her libretto Dream of the Pacific, an opera composed by Stephen Mager, commissioned and performed by Opera Theatre of St. Louis. She holds an MA from Columbia in Directing. Born in Boston and raised in St. Louis and Marin, Pulitzer also serves as board vice president of the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, which advances experimentation in art curation, installation and live programming.
