Timothy Nelson leads a new generation of young directors. Most recently he was honored as an awardee in the Opera Europa International Directing Prize. In 2003 he founded American Opera Theater, an ensemble incorporating his interests in movement, music, and design, challenging audiences' ideas about opera as theater. Nelson has become known for innovative productions of traditional repertoire, rarely heard works of both opera and theater, and for the creation of new concept works. He continues to develop approaches to expanding understanding of opera as
theater, concert, and ritual, to connect the art form with contemporary social questions and dialogues.
Most recently Nelson directed “David et Jonathas” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, a cabaret “Carmen” based loosely on Peter Brook's version, of which the Baltimore Sun said Nelson “out-Brooked Brook”, Philip Glass' “Hydrogen Jukebox” at Georegtown University as part of the 2009 presidential inauguration festivities, and “Songspiel”, an original Kurt Weill offering with soprano Sylvia McNair exploring homelessness in New Orleans at the time of hurricane Katrina. He served as stage director for “La Didone” with the Washington Early Music Festival, and
stage director for the Bloomington Early Music Festival's production of “Il Re Pastore”. Nelson has pioneered the creation of new theater works such as “Las Cuerdas del Titiritero” with Fenix de los Ingenos, “Ground” for the Baltimore Theatre Project, and the multimedia “Fleury” and “Annunciation | Visitation” for Indiana University, which combined music of George Crumb and Francois Couperin in a meditation on female iconification and objectification. Upcoming projects include Handel's “Jephtha” for the Handel Choir of Baltimore and “Giulio Cesare” with Orchestra London, Peter Maxwell Davies' “The Lighthouse” for the National Reisopera and the Grachtenfestival, “Gonzales Cantata” at Bard College, a new musical setting of the Alberto Gonzales senate hearings looking at the loss of innocence in American politics, and a production of Kurt Weill's “Lost in the Stars” with Baltimore city youth as a
community exploration of race relations in the city. He has been the recipient of grants from Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation, the Virginia Commission on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
A committed educator Nelson leads workshops in opera as theater at Indiana University and at Georgetown University. He is Artistic Director of the Canadian Operatic Arts Academy at the University of Western Ontario. His work as a director and designer has been praised as at once "progressive" and "knowledgeable" - "propulsive" and "fluid". The New York Times calls his work “the future of opera” while the Baltimore Sun calls his productions “vivid, postmodern” with “striking stage pictures”, saying his work is “fresh, inventive, invigorating”.