Malena Dayen, Associate Director

Malena Dayen is an Argentinian opera stage director and a Princeton Hodder Fellow.

Recent engagements include serving on the directing staff at the Metropolitan Opera for Deborah Colker’s productions of Ainadamar and El último sueño de Frida y Diego, and for Andrea Chénier. Last season, Malena directed the world premiere of Derrick Wang’s Fearless for OperaDelaware, a new opera based on the life of Hazel Ying Lee, the trailblazing World War II aviator and member of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. She also reprised El Oratorio Panhíspanico, a multimedia production that blends contemporary classical music with the rich rhythms of Latin America, composed by Alejandro Zuleta for the MACC ensemble.

Previous engagements include a concert production of Aida, featuring interactive projections, and the first U.S. production of Menotti’s La Médium in Spanish for Fort Worth Opera; Dialogues des Carmélites at Montclair State University; and Roméo et Juliette, Carmen, and Frida at Opera Naples. She also led an off-off-Broadway lab at Target Margin Theater, co-creating a new opera based on Valerie Solanas’s Up Your Ass.

Malena is the co-creator and director of luzAzul, an opera for babies and their caregivers that premiered in New York City and has since been presented at La MaMa Kids and toured internationally to the ŻiguŻajg Festival in Malta and the Atta Festival in Türkiye. She also co-created and directed Bare Opera’s FireSongs by Thomas Cabaniss, presented in collaboration with National Sawdust at Chelsea Factory.

In 2020, Malena won First Prize in Catapult Opera’s competition for innovation in opera. She directed Teatro Grattacielo’s filmed productions of Fedora and Mefistofele, which were selected for the Munich Music Video Awards, the 4th Dimension Independent Film Festival, and the London International Music Video Awards. She also directed Cuando el fuego abrasa for Opera Hispánica and Teatro Grattacielo, and Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz at La MaMa and the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice.

Before focusing on directing, Malena enjoyed an international career as a mezzo-soprano. She made her debut as Cherubino in Le nozze di Figaro at the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro and has also performed in Carmen, Manon Lescaut, Elektra, and Thaïs at the Theatro Municipal de São Paulo. Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Malena is a Spanish-music and tango specialist, performing this repertoire with orchestras worldwide.