Miriam Ellis

Miriam Ellis, Ph.D, is Lecturer Emerita, UC Santa Cruz, where she taught French for over 30 years, was translator, stage director, and producer for the Opera Workshop, and founded the International Playhouse (renamed the Miriam Ellis International Playhouse, or MEIP). Now in its 17th season, MEIP is the only program in academia which produces annual fully-staged student performances in several languages (with English super-titles) on the same bill. Her theater work on campus, which eventually led to the creation of MEIP, began in 1972, with the establishment of Les Trétaux d’Essai, a project which offered programs in French annually for over two decades.

Dr. Ellis has translated into singable English seven complete opera librettos, most of which have been performed, and dozens of arias for concert and recital programs that she produced for the Young Artists Series of the Santa Cruz Opera Society, Inc. (SCOSI), which she and Dr. Sherwood Dudley founded in 1976 and which has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. Dr. Ellis has contributed her translations to the online site, the Aria Database, and is on the editorial team of ResMusica, a daily online international journal devoted to classical music and dance, for which she has translated concert and opera reviews, interviews, and various other texts.