5 Things to Know About MacArthur 'Genius' Yuval Sharon

Opera is often perceived as a staid and static art form, but director Yuval Sharon has made it his life’s work to push its boundaries. The 37-year-old director has a professed “manic  love for creating impossible scenarios and discovering how to make them a reality” and it shows in the projects he’s undertaken and the acclaim they have found in the public. His work has been called “dizzyingly spectacular” by the New York Magazine and himself “opera’s disrupter in residence” by the New York Times. If you have yet to be introduced to him and his work, here’s a quick rundown.

Click on the images below to read an overview of the lauded opera director and his boundary-defying work.

1) Sharon was born and raised in Chicago to Israeli parents. He thought he was supposed to hate L.A., but it turns out, the openness and freedom the city offered was perfect for his work.

2) He has pledged his allegiance to art “that is inclusive and awakens the aspirational glimmer in each of us.” Read the rest of his pledge.

3) In “Crescent City,” he brings to life New Orleans in the aftermath of a hurricane inside a 25,000-square-foot warehouse in Atwater Village, using a 360-degree decentralized set.

4) Sharon stages “Invisible Cities” inside Los Angeles’s Union Station with audience members wandering the busy train station wearing wireless headphones. Read more about the project. Watch the Artbound episode below.

5) In homage to Los Angeles’s freeways, Sharon found a way to stage an opera inside 24 moving cars zigzagging throughout the city. Read Sharon's thoughts on the project. Watch the Artbound episode below.

Bonus: the maestro loves this quote by Marcel Duchamp: “the audience completes the work.” You will see him quote it here, here and here.

Top Image: Still from "Hopscotch."