Isabel Milenski has received critical acclaim as an opera director of striking originality and emotional power. She is known for her innovative productions and her highly physical and expressive work with young artists. A director, artistic producer and teacher, Isabel proudly holds the position of Artistic Director of Brooklyn College Opera Theater, where she has produced and directed staged eight full scale productions, including new works such as Doug Geer’s The Calling, which centered around the event and aftermath of 9/11. Isabel’s Brooklyn College projects also include video productions of Bizet’s Carmen and Michael Ching’s Speed Dating Tonight. Prior to her position at Brooklyn College, she was Artistic Director for Hofstra Opera Theater for over a decade where she produced 14 full scale productions and also led the program’s scenes programs.

Isabel founded the site-specific company, Floating Opera New York, which had as its inaugural performance Pelleas and Melisande on a historic barge in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Isabel is also in demand as a director in opera’s professional landscape. At Opera in Williamsburg, in collaboration with Music Director Jorge Parodi, she has been a returning director for the productions of Carmen, La Cenerentola, Rigoletto and Così fan tutte. Other national directing credits include Shostakovich’s Moscow, Cherry Town, Janacek’s Jenufa, Milhaud’s Trois Operas Minutes, Richard Strauss' The Silent Woman and Handel's Semele at the Long Beach Opera in California. In the Bay Area she staged a fiery adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey as a rock opera for Oakland’s famous foundry The Crucible. At Los Angeles’ Getty Center she has directed Peri’s Euridice in the Getty’s 400 year commemoration of the birth of opera. At the Getty, she also directed Virginia Woolf's play Freshwater. In New York she has directed Apollo and Daphne for Pocket Opera of New York and the off-Broadway musical, Woody Guthrie Dreams. Other productions include Cavalli’s La Calisto, Argento's The Voyage of Edgar Allen Poe, The Marriage of Figaro at the Juilliard School, as well as Britten’s The Turn of the Screw at the Cincinnati Conservatory of music, which received a National Opera Association award. In San Francisco she directed the world premiere of Gang Situ's The Grand Seducers, a cross-cultural opera for the Chinese Culture Center. Further teaching credits include Penn State University, Beijing’s National Center for the Performing Arts, Hong Kong’s Academy for the Performing Arts and Tokyo International Vocal Arts program in Japan and Oberlin in Italy in Arezzo, Italy.