Kaley Karis Smith is an “assured and inventive” (Broad Street Review) stage director and artistic collaborator from Nebraska who has worked with opera companies across the country as a stage manager, assistant stage director, and stage director. In 2023, she was awarded the Opera America Women Directors Grant for her production of La traviata with Opera Baltimore and OperaDelaware, and helmed a new production of Rusalka at Opera Idaho. She has directed revivals of Madama Butterfly and La traviata for Houston Grand Opera and was the assistant director for their new production of Il trovatore in 2024. As a member of the Pittsburgh Opera Resident Artist Program, she directed Soldier Songs and The Rose Elf. Other directing credits include: The Telephone and Adriana Lecouvreur (Pittsburgh Festival Opera), Le Nozze di Figaro (Augusta University), The Crucible and Turn of the Screw (Chicago Summer Opera), Goldie B. and The Three Singing Bears and Opera for the Young: The Elixir of Love (Virginia Opera). She has also joined the faculty of Oberlin Conservatory and Notre Dame University as a visiting professor of opera studies and stage director of their opera scenes programs, and in the spring of 2025 she directed Orpheus in the Underworld at Baldwin Wallace Conservatory in Cleveland.
