Dr. Nicole Kenley-Miller
Assistant Professor of Music
Opera Stage Director
Email: nicolekenleymiller@ou.edu
Office: Reynolds Performing Arts Center 1265
Website: nicolekenleymiller.com
Dr. Nicole Kenley-Miller is known for her colorful and embodied productions of opera and music theatre, both on stage and film. Her work has premiered off-Broadway in New York and has been featured on The Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America Series. She is very much at home both on and off the stage as a director, producer, singer, and creative artist. Her long career as a professional singer is the foundation on which her stage direction is built, providing a unique understanding of the needs of singing actors.
She previously served as Production Manager and Stage Director for University of Houston's Moores Opera Center, where she directed and produced Sondheim on Sondheim, The Bartered Bride, Albert Herring, La Rondine, The Secret Marriage, and Gianni Schicchi. For the screen, she created opera films of Trouble in Tahiti and A Hand of Bridge featuring the students at UH. Her direction and design concept for the films garnered multiple awards from national and international film competitions and took First Prize in both The American Prize and National Opera Association Opera Production Competitions.
Most recently, she has served as the first new stage director in the forty-year history of Houston's Gilbert and Sullivan Society, directing The Pirates of Penzance in the summer of 2023, about which the Houston Press called her direction "immensely likable" and "full of ingenuity." She has also directed professionally for Houston's Opera in the Heights in sold-out productions of Amahl and the Night Visitors and La Bohème, the latter for which Opera Magazine noted her "spirited handling" of the stage direction.
In Summer of 2024, Dr. Kenley-Miller made her European directing debut in a production of Il filosofo di campagna, a co-production of the Pergolesi Foundation in Jesi, Italy, and the FIO-Italia Festival in Urbania. The production was enjoyed by audiences in the historic Bramante Theatre in Urbania and an open-air performance in Morro d'Alba. She will be returning to direct again with the Pergolesi Foundation and FIO-Italia in the future.
As Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Sugar Land Opera, she helped establish the former Imperial Theatre, the first professional theatre space in Fort Bend County. There she directed Hansel and Gretel, The Impresario, and the US premiere of Howard Blake's The Station for Sugar Land Opera, in addition to producing a wide range of programming including theatre, choral society, and educational opera and musical theatre workshops.
Throughout her career, she has worked fluidly between the opera and music theatre genres. She directed the first musical produced by the Kathrine G. McGovern College of the Arts at University of Houston, a collaborative production of Little Shop of Horrors between the Schools of Music and Theatre and Dance. Previously her work in music theatre has included Camelot and a revue of Rodgers and Hammerstein for Lone Star College – Cy Fair; a revue of Leonard Bernstein's music for Houston Baptist University; Annie for the Navasota Arts Alliance; and multiple music theatre workshops for the former Imperial Performing Arts in Sugar Land.
Her latest creative venture is the founding of Intersection Arts, an organization which explores the convergence of different art forms to speak to social and cultural issues of our day. Its first production was The Women Have Something to Say, a newly-composed theatrical music work that premiered in 2021 in Houston which celebrates women’s voices. Excerpts of the show were featured on the Kennedy Center’s pandemic livestream series Arts Across America and a new version of the work premiered off-Broadway at Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre in New York City in May 2023.
- DMA (Vocal Performance, minor in Opera Directing) - University of Houston
- MM (Vocal Performance and Opera) - Eastman School of Music
- BM (Vocal Performance) - Hardin-Simmons University
