James Meena

Conductor

Maestro James Meena, Opera Carolina’s General Director and Principal Conductor since 2000, consistently earns critical acclaim for his artistic vision, executive leadership and dynamic presence on the podium.

In his 25-year tenure with Opera Carolina, he has elevated the company’s performance standards to those of a major regional theater, expanded the education department by 100-fold, and, in the face of corporate and government funding cutbacks, generated twice the requisite private sector funding needed to meet the goals of the company. Early in his career in Charlotte, he established the company’s first Endowment, which today boasts assets of more than $3.5 million, as well as increasing the annual budget from $1.2 million to $3.8 million.

With extensive experience in opera, ballet, and symphonic music, Maestro Meena held principal and resident conducting posts with the Cleveland Ballet, Toledo Symphony, Opera Grand Rapids, and Toledo Opera. Additionally, his guest conducting appearances include a nationally televised Thanksgiving concert for the Korean Broadcasting System Symphony; performances of Stravinsky’s tour de force Le Sacre du printemps with the National Symphony Orchestra, Taiwan; concerts with the Cairo Symphony Orchestra in the new Cairo Opera House; and symphony concerts with Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania and the Orchestra della Toscana in Italy.

Musically, the breadth of Mo. Meena’s repertoire is represented by the traditional works of Mozart, Beethoven, Puccini, Berlioz, and Verdi. He most recently led the new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte for four prestigious Italian theaters in Como, Brescia, Pavia, and Cremona; Puccini’s Turandot in the historic amphitheaters of Taorimina and Sicarusa, Sicily; a double-bill of Rachmaninoff’s Aleko paired with Pagliacci and La fanciulla del West, both with the restored New York City Opera; La fanciulla del West for five Italian theaters: Teatro di Giglio in Lucca, Teatro Verdi in Pisa, Teatro Alighieri di Ravenna, Teatro Pavarotti di Modena, and Teatro Goldoni di Livorno, plus several productions for Opera Carolina, Toledo Opera, and Opera Grand Rapids; a gala concert with the Toledo Symphony Orchestra and Renée Fleming; Porgy and Bess with Margaret Island Open-Air Theatre in Budapest for their Summer Festival; Turandot with Tulsa Opera; La bohème with the Puccini Festival in Torre del Lago as well as Opéra de Montréal; and a Masterworks Concert with Memphis Symphony Orchestra.

Mo. Meena’s Opera Carolina performances of Faust, Eugene Onegin, Il trovatore, and Margaret Garner were recorded and broadcast over National Public Radio’s World of Opera. He also conducted the première of Transit of Venus by the Canadian team of composer Victor Davies and librettist Maureen Hunter, which was recorded for national broadcast on the CBC.  

Mo. Meena was the lead producer and music director for Douglas Tappin’s I Dream, a new work created in 2018 for the 50^th commemoration of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. For the project, he raised more than $3.5mil. For Opera Carolina, he has presented six regional premières, including Cold Sassy Tree and Susannah by Carlisle Floyd, Richard Danielpour’s Margaret Garner, starring Denyce Graves in April 2006, The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson with Ms. Graves in 2024, Zach Redler’s The Falling and the Rising, and Derek Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg. He also presented the company’s first productions of Der Rosenkavalier, Nabucco, Macbeth, and Les pêcheurs des perles.

On opera stages, he has conducted legendary singers, including Renée Fleming, Denyce Graves, James McCracken, Mignon Dunn, Marilyn Horne, Jerome Hines, Diana Soviero, Jerry Hadley, Mark Delavan, and Marcello Giordani.

James Meena is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and Baldwin Wallace College Conservatory of Music. His principal conducting teachers include Thomas Mihalak (New Jersey Symphony), Robert Page (Cleveland Orchestra), Rudolph Fellner (Pittsburgh Opera), and Boris Halip (Bolshoi Ballet), with whom he also studied violin. He has served as Assistant Conductor to Andre Previn, Gunther Schuller, Michael Tilson Thomas, Anton Guadagno, and Anton Coppola.

For several seasons, he was Associate Conductor of the Pittsburgh Opera, where he made his operatic début conducting Die Zauberflöte. He made his professional début with the Pittsburgh Symphony, conducting Haydn’s monumental oratorio The Creation.

In 1997, James Meena was awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award by his undergraduate alma mater for his commitment to visionary excellence and growth of cultural institutions.