Joel Ivany

Joel Ivany is the Founder and Artistic Director of Against the Grain (AtG), the artistic director of Opera at Banff Centre, and was recently appointed Artistic Director at Edmonton Opera. His directing credits include productions of Verdi’s Macbeth (Minnesota Opera), Carmen (Vancouver Opera), Les Contes d’Hoffmann (Edmonton Opera), Gavin Bryars’s Marilyn Forever (Adelaide Festival) and Le nozze di Figaro (revival at Norwegian National Opera).

He is the author of seven (and counting) original librettos for companies such as the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the Canadian Opera Company. He is a multiple Dora Mavor Moore Award nominee for Outstanding Direction as well as for Outstanding New Opera/Musical, winning one for Figaro’s Wedding.

Recent mainstage directing credits include Dead Man Walking at Minnesota Opera and the multiple award-winning production of Gluck’s Orphée⁺ with Opera Columbus, AtG, and Banff Centre. He has directed productions for the Canadian Opera Company (Hänsel und Gretel, Carmen), Toronto Symphony Orchestra (Mozart’s Requiem, Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins), the Canadian Children’s Opera Company (Brundibár), Vancouver Opera (Carmen, Dead Man Walking), and Claude Vivier’s Kopernikus for AtG and Banff Centre. Recent highlights include Messiah/Complex (AtG) and directing the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards.

He is a proud graduate of the Opera School at the University of Toronto and is a member of the Alumni Wall of Fame at his alma mater, Western University.