Set Designer

Don’t miss the Houston premiere of the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 opera Silent Night. HGO will present a new production of the opera, in a revised version from hit-making composer Kevin Puts, who recently debuted his The Hours to raves at the Met. Inspired by the 2005 film Joyeux Noël, this powerful portrayal of peace amidst conflict captures the real-life Christmas truce of 1914, during World War I.

EPSG:4326

Silent Night

Wortham Theater Center

You could say Vivaldi had a kind of synesthesia when writing The Four Seasons. What does being cold feel and sound like? MacArthur Award-winning playwright and librettist Sarah Ruhl joins Anthony Roth Costanzo to co-conceive a tapestry of Vivaldi’s music, telling an original story about a world in which the seasons are completely out of order. 

The Seasons

Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts

AMOC* opens our milestone Run AMOC* Festival with the New York premiere of The Comet / Poppea. This production fuses Monteverdi’s The Coronation of Poppea (1642) with W.E.B. Du Bois’s short story The Comet (1920). Directed by Yuval Sharon, it explores power, survival, and race through the lens of cosmic disaster. George Lewis’s evocative new score—a 2025 Pulitzer finalist—links these narratives in a visionary operatic landscape. The stellar cast features AMOC* members Davóne Tines and Anthony Roth Costanzo. Tony Award-winner and Lincoln Center Artist-in-Residence (2022–24) Mimi Lien’s rotating set merges ancient Rome with comet-ravaged New York, creating an apocalyptic, immersive experience.

“The Comet / Poppea” – Run AMOC* Festival at Lincoln Center

Lincoln Center

The most recent opera by preeminent American composer John Adams—a glorious adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal drama—has its Met premiere. Following her debut in the company premiere of Adams’s El Niño in 2024, soprano Julia Bullock stars as the irresistible Cleopatra, one of theater’s most complex and captivating characters, opposite bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the conflicted Antony. Adams himself takes the podium to conduct his lyrical and richly orchestrated score, leading a new staging by groundbreaking director Elkhanah Pulitzer that transports the story of troubled romance and political strife from ancient Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s. Tenor Paul Appleby is Caesar, who goes to war with Antony, and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong is Caesar’s sister and Antony’s forsaken wife Octavia.

Antony and Cleopatra

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts

Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded premieres at the Metropolitan Opera, wrestling with often-overlooked issues created by 21st-century warmaking: the ethical conflicts created by the use of modern military technology and the psychological and emotional toll supposedly safe remote technology takes on our servicepersons. Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as the hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. American tenor Ben Bliss costars as the Wyoming rancher Eric in a production by Michael Mayer that brings this story to life in a high-tech staging which presents a variety of perspectives on the action. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to conduct Tesori’s kaleidoscopic opera, which will be transmitted live from the Met stage to cinemas on October 19.

Grounded

Shalin Liu Performance Center

In its Metropolitan Opera premiere, Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded wrestles with often-overlooked issues created by 21st-century warmaking: the ethical conflicts posed by the use of modern military technology, and the psychological and emotional toll that supposedly safe remote technology takes on our servicepersons. Canadian mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo stars as the hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. American tenor Ben Bliss co-stars as the Wyoming rancher Eric in a production by Michael Mayer, which brings this story to life in a high-tech staging presenting a variety of perspectives on the action. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes the podium to conduct Tesori’s kaleidoscopic opera.

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Two-time Tony Award–winning composer Jeanine Tesori’s powerful new opera Grounded, commissioned by the Met and based on librettist George Brant’s acclaimed play, wrestles with the ethical quandaries and psychological toll of 21st-century warfare. Mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, one of opera’s most compelling young stars, portrays Jess, a hot-shot fighter pilot whose unplanned pregnancy takes her out of the cockpit and lands her in Las Vegas, operating a Reaper drone halfway around the world. As she struggles to adjust to this new way of doing battle, she fights to maintain her sanity, and her soul, as she is called to rain down death by remote control. Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin oversees the Met premiere of Tesori’s kaleidoscopic score and a cast that also features tenor Ben Bliss as the Wyoming rancher who becomes Jess’s husband. Michael Mayer’s high-tech staging, using a vast array of LED screens, presents a variety of perspectives on the action, including the drone’s predatory view from high above.

Saratoga Market Center

David struggles to reconcile spiritual humility with ambition. His desire for more wreaks havoc on his family, friendships and, perhaps, his own faith. His journey from preacher to Governor, like the lives of those closest to him, is shaped by the current affairs of the 1980s.

The Righteous

Santa Fe Opera

The Comet / Poppea brings together seemingly disparate worlds connected by stories of cultural transformation. The work juxtaposes Claudio Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea (The Coronation of Poppea), an Italian opera from 1643 unfolding among the social divisions of ancient Rome; and the world premiere of The Comet, based on the 1924 science-fiction short story by sociologist and Pan-Africanist civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois. Set in 1920s New York City, “The Comet” depicts a Black man and white woman as the only survivors after a comet hits Earth.

The Comet / Poppea

Museum of Contemporary Art

Sonya and her uncle Vanya have devoted their lives to managing the family farm in isolation, but when her celebrated, ailing father and his charismatic wife move in, their lives are upended. In the heat of the summer, the wrong people fall in love, desires and resentments erupt, and the family is forced to reckon with the ghosts of their unlived lives.

Uncle Vanya

Lincoln Center Theatre

She was his queen. He was her downfall.  San Francisco Opera's 100th Season begins with John Adams' thrilling new opera, commissioned for the Company's centennial and conducted by Music Director Eun Sun Kim.

Segerstrom Center for the Arts

When the goddess of Death is cast down to Earth to live as a mortal named Laila Starr, the boundaries between the divine and the human begin to blur in this vivid, transporting world premiere from Kamala Sankaram and Minita Gandhi. The Many Deaths of Laila Starr was commissioned and developed through Minnesota Opera’s New Works Initiative, adapted from the acclaimed graphic novel by Ram V and Filipe Andrade. Infused with elements of Konnakol, Raga, and EDM, this fantasy on purpose and impermanence unfolds with both kinetic energy and striking clarity, as a god made mortal begins to see the world—and life itself—through fresh eyes.

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr

Ordway Center for the Performing Arts

Following his smash-hit company debut with The Hours, composer Kevin Puts returns to the Met with his Pulitzer Prize–winning first opera, inspired by the true events of the 1914 Christmas truce, when soldiers spontaneously set aside the horrors of the First World War and crossed the trenches to mingle, exchange gifts, and sing carols with the enemy. A poignant depiction of shared humanity in the most inhumane circumstances, Puts’s grand, cinematic opera—with a libretto by Mark Campbell based on the film Joyeux Noël—has been widely acclaimed since its 2011 premiere, hailed as “an overwhelming emotive experience” by The Guardian. Silent Night receives an evocative staging by James Robinson that takes the audience directly to the battlefields of the Western Front. The star-studded cast, featuring soprano Elza van den Heever and tenors Ben Bliss and Rolando Villazón, among many others, is conducted by debuting maestro Dalia Stasevska.

Set Designer

Mimi Lien

Events

Upcoming events

Oct 31 - Nov 8, 2026

The Many Deaths of Laila Starr · Minnesota Opera

Mar 8 - Apr 3, 2027

Silent Night · The Metropolitan Opera

Past events

Jan 23 - Feb 8, 2026

Silent Night · Houston Grand Opera

19 - 21 Dec, 2025

The Seasons · Opera Philadelphia

About

Mimi Lien hasn't added a bio