Yuval Sharon is an American opera director whose unconventional body of work is committed to expanding the art form. He founded the acclaimed experimental company The Industry in Los Angeles in 2010 and transformed Detroit Opera as its artistic director starting in 2020. Sharon served as Artist Collaborator at the LA Phil from 2016 to 2019, where he launched the first-ever full cycle of John Cage’s Europeras and directed a landmark production of Meredith Monk’s ATLAS. His first book, A New Philosophy of Opera, was published in September 2024. His second, Anarchy at the Opera, is forthcoming from University of Chicago Press. Sharon was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2017.

During his residency as the inaugural Global Solutions Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium, Sharon workshopped concepts for productions of Proximity (Lyric Opera of Chicago, 2023), Così fan tutte (Detroit Opera, 2025), and Tristan und Isolde (Metropolitan Opera of New York, 2026), and he delivered the 2025 Berlin Family Lectures at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the research team on the Neubauer Collegium Arts Labs project, through which he and a group of collaborators are developing concepts for a production of Wagner’s Ring cycle at the Metropolitan Opera, premiering in the 2027-28 season.