KALEY KARIS SMITH
stage director
APT AND TELLING.
Assured and inventive.
"The production’s staging was equally skilled. In her program notes, stage director Kaley Karis Smith writes that as a woman, Violetta is “denied the agency to live her life as she would like in Parisian society,” so she must make “courageous, selfless, and passionate” choices. Karis Smith, too, makes apt and telling choices. She moves ensembles gracefully around the Grand’s not-so-large stage, her blocking assured and inventive. But she also inserted small, almost imperceptible staging touches—Alfredo caressing Violetta’s glove, or curtains that subtly billow in a fresh country breeze and then go limp as despair overtakes the heroine—that subtly amplified this tale."
LA TRAVIATA | OPERA BALTIMORE | BROAD STREET REVIEW
AT A GLANCE.
Kaley Karis Smith has worked as a stage director and assistant director with opera companies across the country, including Houston Grand Opera, The Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Delaware, Opera Idaho, Opera Omaha, and Virginia Opera. She completed a two-year contract with Pittsburgh Opera as the Resident Artist Stage Director in May 2022, where she directed Soldier Songs and The Rose Elf, and was the assistant stage director for the world premiere of Chris Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann’s In A Grove, directed by Mary Birnbaum. In the 2022/23 season, Ms. Smith directed new productions of La traviata for Opera Delaware and Opera Baltimore and Rusalka for Opera Idaho, as well as reviving La traviata at the Miller outdoor theater for Houston Grand Opera. Last season, she directed scenes programs with Oberlin Conservatory and Notre Dame University, and returned to Houston Grand Opera to remount Madama Butterfly. The 24/25 season brings another collaboration with HGO, a return to Pittsburgh Festival Opera to direct Adriana Lecouvrer, and a directorial debut with Baldwin Wallace Conservatory for Orpheus in the Underworld.
