has added to the opera a dimension of hope that the conductor herself had not envisaged in the first place. In 2001, Sellars briefly directed South Australia's Adelaide Festival of Arts before being replaced by Sue Nattrass. Sellars' directorship remains the most controversial in the festival's history. He said the reason behind his shock departure was that he was "impeding the forward progress of the Festival". The Opposition Arts Spokesperson for South Australia, the Hon. Carolyn Pickles, said: The German soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf said of Sellars: There are names I do not want mentioned in my home. Do not say that name in my presence. I have seen what he has done, and it is criminal. As my husband used to say, so far no one has dared go into the Louvre Museum to spray graffiti on the Mona Lisa, but some opera directors are spraying graffiti over masterpieces.The August 2019 Los Angeles Times piece on Sellars also focused on a production of Lohengrin directed by fellow MacArthur recipient Yuval Sharon. The article concluded by asking about the two American directors, "Can we go so far as to call this a Los Angeles school of opera? From this side of the Atlantic, that’s where the big ideas seem to be coming from." References Notes Sources Favorini, Attilio. 2003. "History, Collective Memory, and Aeschylus' Persians." Theatre Journal 55:1 (March): 99–111. Meyer-Thoss, Gottfried, Extrakte. Peter Sellars – Amerikanisches Welttheater, Parthas Verlag Berlin, 2004 External links 1957 births Living people American theatre directors Harvard University alumni American opera directors MacArthur Fellows University of California faculty Artists from Pittsburgh Phillips Academy alumni