Latino American director, David Radamés Toro, applies his backgrounds in music and mime to create innovative opera productions. He has worked at companies including Minnesota Opera, the Wexford Opera Festival, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Colorado, Opera Idaho, and Tri-Cities Opera.
David aspires to bring cultural relevance, diverse representation, and a modern opera experience to engage with new and returning audiences. Whether through abstraction or realism, from baroque to the modern era, his productions have been recognized for their sincerity and imagination. In a review for his production of Jonathan Dove’s Flight, the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote, “This staging showed that Flight has a beating heart, and something to say.” The San Diego Tribune called his 2019 adaption of Cavalli’s La Calisto “a well-sung and cleverly staged production.”
An admirer of modern era opera, David has had the privilege of directing 21st century works such as Dead Man Walking (Opera Idaho), Three Way (Fargo Morehead Opera), Glory Denied (Opera Fayetteville) and Flight (Minnesota Opera), as well as, assisting on the world premieres of Today It Rains (Opera Parallèle, 2019), Dinner at Eight (Minnesota Opera), The Shining (Minnesota Opera), and A New Kind of Fallout (Pittsburgh Festival Opera). Additionally, He directed the premiere of Rose Made Man: An Inside Out Opera for the Cohen New Works Festival in Austin, TX.
In addition to directing and assistant directing, David Radamés Toro teaches classes and workshops in acting for the opera stage and physical theatre, as well as coaches singers in interpretation and audition preparation. His workshops in Gestural Mechanics are influenced by his own training in Meisner technique, Suzuki/Viewpoints, and classical mime with the goal of empowering singers to effectively combine musical expression and movement. He has taught movement and acting to singers are Minnesota Opera, Opera Neo, Tri-Cities Opera, The University of Texas - Austin, and Opera Steamboat.
David Radamés Toro holds degrees from The University of Texas (DMA), The Ohio State University (MM/MA), and The University of Colorado at Boulder (BM).