Maria Todaro

Maria Todaro came to Florida Grand Opera at a moment when the company needed more than a new season. It needed a reset. Since stepping in as interim general director in 2023 and being confirmed in the role the following year, she modernized operations and worked to restore confidence in one of Miami’s longstanding cultural institutions, without pulling back on what audiences see onstage.

She came unusually prepared for the challenge. Born in France to Italian tenor José Todaro and Brazilian mezzo-soprano Maria-Helena de Oliveira, Todaro grew up around singers, musicians and backstage crews. She performed as a child and began her professional vocal career at 18, while also studying piano and conducting. At her parents’ urging, she added political science and law to her education. By 21, she had founded the French production company Arteodor.

That mix of artist and entrepreneur would follow her throughout her career. Todaro sang as a mezzo-soprano, directed, conducted, wrote, and worked as a fight choreographer. She also co-founded what is now the Hudson Valley International Festival of the Voice. When the pandemic shut down traditional performances, she helped create a live drive-in production of Tosca in Kingston, New York. Later, she reimagined Joseph Bologne’s rarely performed L’Amant Anonyme in 18th-century Guadeloupe, rewriting and translating the libretto for Atlanta Opera in 2023.

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In Miami, Todaro has had to think about opera from every angle. She relocated Florida Grand Opera’s offices to lower costs and accelerated a technology overhaul, all while shaping the company’s artistic future. Her first fully programmed 2025–2026 season moved from Silent Night and Die Fledermaus to Turandot. The Richard Tucker Music Foundation also brought its 50th-anniversary gala to Miami, away from its customary New York setting.

Now Florida Grand Opera is entering its 85th season with Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Giovanni and Nabucco. A special gala will also reach into the company’s archives, bringing rarely seen material from its history back before audiences. For Todaro, looking back is part of figuring out what comes next.

Her own directing career is moving forward just as quickly. In 2026, she made her debut at Italy’s Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago with Tosca, working from Carlo Centolavigna’s historic designs in the place where Puccini lived and composed. In August, she joined the jury of the ORFEO lyric-singing competition in Costa Rica, evaluating emerging singers from across the Americas. And another important European engagement is already on the calendar: Teatro La Fenice in Venice has announced her as director of a new Norma, opening in September 2027.

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There is something fitting about Miami becoming the center of Todaro’s work. The daughter of Italian and Brazilian opera singers, born in France and shaped by a career spanning Europe and the Americas, she now leads an opera company in a city where cultures and languages constantly meet.

Todaro is not interested in preserving opera behind glass. At Florida Grand Opera, she is doing the harder work of keeping an 85-year-old institution financially grounded, artistically ambitious, and worth coming back to.