Peter Kazaras is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, where he served from 2007-2024 as the Inaugural Director of Opera UCLA.  He was also Artistic Director of the Seattle Opera Young Artists Program from 2006 to 2013.    

As an operatic tenor, he performed worldwide at The Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin, Vienna State Opera, L’Opéra National de Paris, and other venues, including for Long Beach Opera in Eugene Onegin.  Recent directing assignments have taken him to Washington National Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Seattle Opera, Glimmerglass Festival, The Dallas Opera, the Merola Program at San Francisco Opera, Music Academy of the West, and The Juilliard School.  In the summer of 2018, he directed A Quiet Place for Tanglewood as part of the Bernstein Centennial celebration.  Just before the pandemic shutdown, he directed a critically acclaimed new production of Samson et Dalila for Washington National Opera.

Peter Kazaras has worked on numerous world premieres both as a singer and as a director.  At UCLA, he directed, supervised, or produced over fifty productions, including the recent world premiere of The Grand Hotel Tartarus, with music and libretto by Richard Danielpour.  
A frequent panelist on the Toll Brothers Metropolitan Opera Quiz, Kazaras is also in demand as a judge for national and international competitions. He is working on several new operas as librettist, dramaturg, stage director, and creative producer.  This summer, he will return to the stage in the role of Mr. Maraczek in She Loves Me for Opera Saratoga.