Michael Hidetoshi Mori

Michael Hidetoshi Mori is an internationally acclaimed stage director, working equally in site-specific settings and conventional theatres. As an operatic stage director, Michael is a two-time Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding Direction winner for Rocking Horse Winner and R.U.R. A Torrent of Light. His work ranges from cutting-edge explorations in presentation with Augmented Opera at Sidewalk Labs, to neo-classical settings of Rigoletto at Sacramento Opera and Il Trittico at West Bay Opera, to community-integrated story development and collaborations with Indigenous artists with Shanawdithit in Toronto and St. John’s and Maada’ookii Songlines with the Luminato Festival. As a film director, his music video Where do I go, in collaboration with singer/pianist/songwriter Morgan Paige Melbourne, recently won best picture at Toronto’s Experimental/Dance/Music Film Festival.

At Tapestry Opera, Michael piloted Tapestry Explorations (Tap:Ex), a bi-annual concert experience that collides opera with other artistic forms. The series has experimented with fully choreographed art-music (Revolutions), synthesized cut-film, track, turn-table, live soprano and percussion (Tables-Turned), a collaboration with punk band Fu*ked Up (Metallurgy), and a mash-up of opera, Persian music and hip-hop dealing with gender and sexual politics (Forbidden). In early 2018 BBC World profiled Michael’s direction of Forbidden as an example of barrier-breaking in opera, and as early as 2015, VICE reviewed how Tap:Ex “gives a glimpse as to what opera can offer us in our multimedia savvy world”

Under Michael’s leadership, Tapestry Opera has been called “The leader of the Canadian opera pack” (Globe and Mail), “One of Ten Artists changing the artistic landscape of Canada” (CBC), and “One of ten Torontonians to watch” (Toronto Star), for his accomplishments at Tapestry Opera.