Biography

Lotfi Mansouri was born on June 15, 1929 in Teheran, Iran. He was a producer and director, known for Moonstruck (1987), Great Performances (1971) and Screen Directors Playhouse (1955). He was married to Marjorie Anne Thompson. He died on August 30, 2013 in San Francisco, California, USA.

American director and administrator of Iranian birth who graduated from University of California at Los Angeles in 1953 with a degree in psychology, then began directing operas. Served as resident stage director for the Zürich Opera (1960-1965) and the Geneva Opera (1965-1975). In 1976 he was named General Director of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto. In 1988 became General Director of the San Francisco Opera.

He commissioned Jake Heggie's first opera, "Dead Man Walking," which went on to become an international hit.

When he was the head of the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto, he introduced supertitles, which became a standard feature of opera performances throughout the English-speaking world.

He was a stage and opera director. He was general director of the San Francisco Opera for 13 years. He had a long collaboration with the Kirov Opera, overseeing the first San Francisco productions of many masterpieces of Russian opera, including works by Prokofiev, Glinka, and Rimsky-Korsakov.