Francesca Zambello

Theater projects have included Show Boat in London at the Royal Albert Hall as well as for the Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera; a new musical, Rebecca, for Vienna's Raimund Theater, Stuttgart's Palladium Theater [de] (presented by Stage Entertainment), and in St. Gallen, Switzerland; Tibet Through the Red Box, a new play by David Henry Hwang for the Seattle Children's Theatre; The Little Prince with Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman; Napoleon in the West End; The Little Mermaid for Disney on Broadway; the musical of The Little House on the Prairie and The Master Butchers at the Guthrie Theater, and Aladdin in Disneyland. For the 2011 Glimmerglass Festival, Zambello, Terrence McNally, and Deborah Voigt collaborated to produce the stage show Voigt Lessons which was revived in 2015 at the Art House in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Zambello developed and directed the world premiere of Christopher Theofanidis' Heart of a Soldier for the San Francisco Opera, where she served as artistic advisor from 2006 to 2011. Other opera projects have included the first international production of Carmen to ever be presented at the National Center for the Performing Arts in Beijing, the world premiere of An American Tragedy, Cyrano and Les Troyens for the Metropolitan Opera, Carmen and Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House, Boris Godunov, War and Peace, Billy Budd and William Tell at the Paris Opera, and Der Ring des Nibelungen for the San Francisco Opera and the Washington National Opera.

An internationally recognized director of opera and theater, Francesca Zambello's American debut took place at the Houston Grand Opera with a production of Fidelio in 1984. She began her career as an assistant director to Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. From 1984 until 1991 she was the Artistic Director of the Skylight Music Theater with Stephen Wadsworth. She debuted in Europe at Teatro La Fenice in Venice with Beatrice di Tenda in 1987 and has since staged new productions at major theaters, festivals and opera houses around the world. Also, she served as Artistic Advisor to the San Francisco Opera from 2006-2011. Currently, she is the Artistic and General Director of The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, and the Artistic Director of Washington National Opera.

Born in New York City, Zambello lived in Europe when she was a child, learning to speak French, Italian, German and Russian. Zambello is of Italian descent, the daughter of actress Jean (née Sincere) and Charles C. Zambello, a former actor who became head of flight entertainment at TWA. She attended Moscow University in 1976 and graduated from Colgate University in 1978.

Francesca Zambello (born August 24, 1956) is an American opera and theatre director. She serves as director of Glimmerglass Festival and the Washington National Opera.