Elio Bucky

Elio Bucky is an opera stage director with an interdisciplinary background in performance, composition, and design. Their work celebrates plurality, truth, and innovation in the creative process. Elio is currently pursuing a master's degree in Opera Directing at The Butler School.

This season, Elio directs La bohème and "Song Re-Imagined" at the Butler Opera Center. Previously at BOC, they served as the assistant stage director for The Tales of Hoffmann and Proving Up. In Summer 2023, they were the Lehrer Vocal Institute Directing Fellow at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA. Projects there included coaching and staging Jake Heggie's Here and Gone; directing the cover performance of La bohème; designing projections and staging ensembles for Una Noche en Miraflores, an evening of Spanish-language songs curated by Ana María Martínez and Cesar Cañon; and serving as the assistant director of La bohème and Cabaret: 1979, a devised work by James Darrah and Craig Terry. They were named a Finalist in the Music Academy Fast Pitch Competition for their proposal to leverage Mixed Reality (AR/VR) technology to develop creative solutions for accessibility in the opera house.

Elio’s affinity for vocal music began as a member of the San Francisco Boys Chorus, with whom they sang onstage as a children’s chorister at the San Francisco Opera, on international tours, and at the first Presidential Inauguration of Barack Obama.

Elio holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice and opera performance from the Bienen School of Music at Northwestern University. As an undergraduate, they simultaneously completed a Bachelor of Music in Voice & Opera Performance, a Bachelor of Science in Communication Studies, the Integrated Marketing Communications Certificate, and graduated magna cum laude with departmental honors in both fields. They spent three summers learning and performing at the Chautauqua Institution.