Peter Sellars on the importance of theater

Listen as renowned American theater director Peter Sellars discusses topics in arts and economics. From the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston lecture, "Cultural Leadership in Difficult Times (Fighting off a Depression) or the Economics of Transcendence" presented on February 4, 2009. Part of The Ruth and Carl J. Shapiro Celebrity Lecture series.

Known to Bostonians since he directed Handel's Orlando at the American Repertory Theater in 1981, the year he graduated from Harvard, Peter Sellars is one of the leading theater, opera, and television directors in the world today. His productions have ranged from Mozart's Cosi fan tutte set in a diner and Don Giovanni in Spanish Harlem to the world premieres of John Adams's Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, and Doctor Atomic, for which Sellars also wrote the libretto. In 2004, he collaborated with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and video artist Bill Viola on the visionary Tristan Project. In 2006, Sellars was the artistic director of New Crowned Hope, a month-long celebration in Vienna's Mozart Year for which he invited international artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to create new work in all fields.

Sellars strikes a universal chord with audiences, engaging contemporary social and political issues. Join this extraordinary man of the theater as he considers what the arts can mean in our time.

For more information on MFA lectures, please visit http://www.mfa.org/programs/lectures-and-courses

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• economy
• depression
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