Bio
Chía Patiño joined the Department of Voice & Opera as an assistant professor in the fall of 2024. She brings extensive directing experience, having worked with opera companies in the US, Spain, Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Chile, México, Brazil, Nicaragua, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt.
Patiño served as the executive and artistic director of the National Theatre in Quito, Ecuador, for ten years. Producing and curating five hundred events annually for the city and country, she elevated the level of the theatre to a respected and recognized institution in Latin America, and it joined Ópera Latinoamérica (OLA). In 2019, she was invited to join the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas in Austin, and she re-established her connection with the Aspen Music Festival, where she teaches each summer.
Patiño is particularly interested in directing new works. In 2024 she directed the workshop of Yevgeniy Sharlat and Stephanie Fleishmann’s Paradiso, written and performed by Estelí Gomez and Hub New Music. She will be directing The House on Mango Street by Derek Bermel and Sandra Cisneros in 2025 and is involved in the development of Macabea by Suzanne Farrin, based on The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector.
Recent engagements include the Seattle Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Opera Tenerife, Aspen Opera Theater and VocalARTS, Northern Lights Music Festival, Williamsburg Opera, the Butler Opera Center at the University of Texas, Opera Colorado, and the Glimmerglass Festival (summer 2025).
Patiño completed her undergraduate degrees in composition and piano at the University of Louisville, and holds an MM and a DM in composition from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she wrote and produced her opera Dreamwalker. She received her MFA in opera stage directing at the University of Cincinnati.
