Daniel Pelzig has used skills learned through his work in theatre and ballet and applied them to his work on the opera stage. In his second season as resident choreographer for Santa Fe Opera, he had an enormous success with Emmerich Kalman's opera Countess Maritza. In his New York Times review, James R. Oestreich stated:
"Perhaps no one contributes more to the production's success than Daniel Pelzig, the choreographer. Mr. Pelzig makes the most of the company's fine, even acrobatic dancers. But he also incorporates the singers into the movement to the varying degrees that their abilities allow. It is a rare opera production in which the singers and dancers do not appear to come from different planets."
The New York Times
In 2007, Pelzig made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera choreographing Mary Zimmerman's new production of Lucia di Lammermoor, which starred Natalie Dessay, and Iphigenie en Tauride, which starred Susan Graham and Plácido Domingo. He has since gone on to choreograph The Met's new production of La Sonnambula, starring Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Florez, the revivals of Lucia di Lammermoor with Diana Damrau and Anna Netrebko, and served as associate choreographer to multiple Tony Award nominee Graciela Daniele for Armida, starring Renée Fleming and Lawrence Brownlee.
After directing Countess Maritza in revival for the Santa Fe Opera in 1999, he began directing for opera on a more frequent basis, beginning with Semele and The Messiah for Boston's Handel and Haydn Society. In recent years he has directed new productions of Carmen for Central City Opera and The Bartered Bride for Opera Boston, Tosca and Turandot for the Forth Worth Opera, Mary Zimmerman's production of Philip Glass's Akhnaten for the Opera-National-du-Rhin in Strasbourg and Stephen Wadworth's production of Iphigenie en Tauride for the Palau des Arts in Valencia, Spain.
For Lyric Opera of Chicago, he has choreographed The Merry Widow directed by Gary Griffin, Regina directed by Charles Newell, The Cunning Little Vixen directed by Chas Rader-Shieber and Die Fledermaus directed by Bruce Donnell. For Chicago Opera Theatre he has choreographed Death in Venice and Akhnaten; for Seattle Opera, Iphigenie en Tauride, Salome and Florencia en el Amazonas; for Houston Grand Opera, The Cunning Little Vixen and Samson and Dalila; for the Los Angeles Opera, Aida, Samson and Dalila and Countess Maritza and in his three seasons as resident choreographer for the Santa Fe Opera other operas he choreographed include Ariadne auf Naxos, Capriccio, Salome, Kurt Weill's The Protagonist and Francesca Zambello's production of David Lang's Modern Painters.
His work has been seen at Cincinnati Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Pacific and New York City Opera. Favorite projects include Zambello's production of Moskow-Cherymushki at Bard Summerscape, Robert Carsen's production of Regina for the Scottish Opera and Kenneth Cazan's productions of Oklahoma! and West Side Story for Central City Opera.
Awards include the gold medal at the Boston International Choreography Competition and numerous grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He has been a visiting professor at Barnard College and SUNY Buffalo and earned his degree in cellular biology from Columbia University.
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