Ira Siff
U.S.A.
Ira Siff is a native New Yorker, who grew up on the standing room line of the old Metropolitan Opera, worshiping the famous singers of the 60’s. A graduate of the Cooper Union, with a degree in Fine Arts, Mr. Siff began to study voice, and made his debut as a tenor in 1970. For the next decade, he performed roles in opera, operetta and musicals in New York, at The New York Shakespeare Festival, Circle in the Square, Playwrights Horizons, and many other venues. In 1981, he founded La Gran Scena Opera Co. in New York, the internationally acclaimed travesty troupe, whose gifted falsetto “divas” spoofed opera with great affection for nearly three decades, in New York annually, and on tours to some of the great festivals, theatres and opera houses of the world, including Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Edinburgh Festival, the opera houses of Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Caracas, Wiesbaden, Berlin, Barcelona, the Munich Festival, Heidelberg Castle Festival, Venice Festival, Wexford Festival Opera, Belfast Festival, Covent Garden Festival, Bloomsbury Theatre (London), Barcelona Olympics Festival of the Arts, Madrid’s Autumn Festival, Uruguay’s Hotel Conrad Theatre (performing the show in Castillian in all three), five extensive tours to The Netherlands, and countless others.
For the past thirty years, Mr. Siff has been a voice teacher and interpretive coach, teaching in New York, Italy, Israel, Holland and China, giving Master Classes for the Met Opera Guild, and was on the faculty of the Renata Scotto Vocal Academy. In 2000, he turned to stage directing for a decade, gaining critical acclaim for his debut production of Tosca, starring Aprile Millo, and subsequently his semi-staged operas for Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, starring Millo, Marcello Giordani, Dolora Zajick and others, and three operas at the Tanglewood Festival for Maestro Levine. He has also given master classes in bel canto and verismo and numerous lectures for the Metropolitan Opera Guild every season since 2008.
In addition to directing, singing and teaching, Ira Siff writes for Opera News, as a feature writer and CD and DVD critic. He is Commentator on the Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts, a position he has held since 2007. You can learn more about Mr. Siff by visiting www.irasiff.com