Dale Dreyfoos
Stage Director
Dale Dreyfoos has had a multi-faceted career as a Stage Director, Character Tenor, Actor, Educator, and Arts Administrator. He is an Emeritus Professor of Opera/Music Theatre at Arizona State University, a position he held from 1994-2023. As a culmination to his teaching career, Mr. Dreyfoos received a special Teaching Award for Opera/Music Theatre Education from the National Society of Arts and Letters, Arizona Chapter in 2023. His many exceptional students have had internationally and nationally successful careers at many of the most prestigious opera houses throughout the world, including The Metropolitan Opera, Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Bavarian State Opera, Glyndebourne Festival, Opera National de Paris, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, as well as on Broadway, Broadway International and National tours, and in many regional theatres throughout the country.
As a Stage Director, Mr. Dreyfoos has directed over 50 productions of operas, operettas, and musicals, for such companies as Opera Carolina, Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Charleston Opera Company, Birmingham Civic Opera, Arizona Opera Education Tour, Milton Center Series, Newberry Opera, and Arizona State University’s Lyric Opera Theatre. He has also served as an Assistant Stage Director for the Lyric Opera of Chicago Center for American Artists, Opera Carolina, Des Moines Metro Opera, Central City Opera, Virginia Opera, and the Mississippi Opera. His recent productions of Donizetti’s LA FILLE DU REGIMENT and Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS PINAFORE for ASU Music Theatre and Opera won second and third prize in two national opera competitions, and his production of Mozart’s THE MAGIC FLUTE was the winner of 8 Ari-Zoni Awards, including best Music Theatre production and Best Stage Director.
Mr. Dreyfoos began his performing career at the age of 10 as the Boy Soprano soloist with the Atlanta Boy Choir, during which time he appeared as a soloist in Mozart’s VESPERAE SOLENNES DE CONFESSORE with Robert Shaw & the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, as well as appearing in the French, Spanish, and Moroccan premieres of Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera THE GOLDEN VANITY, for which he received accolades for his performance of the role of The Cabin Boy from the musical luminaries Mlle. Nadia Boulanger and Mme. Khachaturian. Since that time, Mr. Dreyfoos has made a specialty of performing over 30 character-roles in opera, operetta, and music theatre with such companies as the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, Arizona Opera, Opera Carolina, Haydn Festival in Eisenstadt, Austria, Birmingham Civic Opera, Mississippi Opera, Newberry Opera, Charleston Opera Company, Shakespeare Sedona, ASU’s Lyric Opera Theatre, and the Alabama Symphony. He has also made special guest appearances for television and public radio stations in Charleston, SC, Charlotte, NC, Phoenix, AZ, and Atlanta, GA, and is a featured performer on two educational compact discs, BIBLE TIMES I & III, several Historical Audio Tours for cities in Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Maryland, as well as an educational cd-rom OPERA-HA HA, produced by Arizona Opera.
Mr. Dreyfoos is also the author of two highly acclaimed educational music dramas, A VISIT WITH AMADEUS and A VISIT WITH MR. & MRS. BACH, which have received over 2,000 performances throughout the eastern United States. He has also served as the author of two narration scripts for the 50th Anniversary of the Santa Fe Opera and an Opera Gala for Arizona Opera, which were narrated by Frederica Von Stade and Hugh Downs, respectively. From 1996-2010, he served as a Stage Artistry Instructor for the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
Master of Music in Opera Production and Performance, University of Texas-Austin -1980 Bachelor of Music in Vocal Performance, Florida State University – 1978