In the 2021/22 season, Schlather returns to Oper Frankfurt to direct new productions of Madama Butterfly, and L’Italiana in Londra by Domenico Cimarosa. Schlather made his European directing debut at Oper Frankfurt in the 2019/20 season, staging George Frideric Händel’s darkest, boldest opera Tamerlano, in a site-specific installation for Frankfurt’s Bockenheimer Depot. The sold-out performance was called “staged with Händel’s courage” (FAZ), “radical, modern” (BNN), “not to be missed” (Frankfurter Neue Presse). Oper Frankfurt was named “House of the Year 2020” for this season by Opernwelt Magazine. Recent highlights include Schlather’s debut with the Santa Fe Opera, where his 2019 production of Mozart’s Così fan tutte was called “the revelation of the Santa Fe opera season,” “modern disturbing, riveting, explosive” (Wall Street Journal), “painful” (New York Times), a “radical, hyper-sexualized, ultra-modern visual poem” (Santa Fe Reporter), “bracingly conceived and beautifully sung” (Santa Fe New Mexican).  His 2018 collaboration with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, The Getty Research Institute, and conductor Christopher Rountree, Fluxconcert, was praised in The New Yorker Magazine’s “Best of 2018” feature, and his 2017 exhibit of The Mother of Us All at the historic Hudson Opera House was one of New York Times’ “Best Opera Performances 2017” and WQXR’s “Best Classical 2017.” His 2015, site-specific performance of Philip Glass’ In The Penal Colony for Boston Lyric Opera at the Cyclorama was named in the New York TImes’ “Best Opera Performances 2015,” and his process-art installation of Handel’s Orlando “Best Opera Performances 2015” by WQXR.  In 2014, Schlather gained extraordinary media attention for a radical series of process-art installations using Händel’s so-called “Ariosto Trilogy” at Whitebox Art Center and National Sawdust. Alcina (2014) and Orlando (2015) were presented as open gallery rehearsals in person and streaming online for three weeks. These performances defetishized product by focusing access on process. The New York Times Art Critic Holland Cotter called them “a fascinating species of performance art,” and Classical Music Editor Zachary Woolfe wrote they were “a valuable project that deserves enthusiastic support,” and “a gift given to the New York cultural scene.” In 2016, Schlather was given an artist residency at National Sawdust, where he and music director Geoffrey McDonald deconstructed Ariodante, the third opera in Handel’s trilogy. This week-long residency was in anticipation of a future production. Schlather and McDonald were later invited to continue this work in 2018 as resident artists in Opera Omaha’s ONE Festival at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, where they collaborated with the musicians of the International Contemporary Ensemble. Plans for Ariodante have been paused by COVID-19. Significant collaborations with the young composer and librettist David Hertzberg include The Wake World, a commission from Opera Philadelphia and The Barnes Foundation, which premiered as part of Opera Philadelphia’s inaugural “O” Festival. The Wake World was awarded “Best New Opera 2017” by the Music Critics Association of North America. A staging of Hertzberg’s next opera, The Rose Elf, premiered in June 2018 in an unusual, site-specific presentation in the Catacombs of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, directed with “up-close intensity” (WQXR). It played a sold-out run and was awarded "Opera Event of 2018" and one of "New York's Most Memorable Concerts 2018" (WQXR) and a "Freddie" for Best New Opera from Operavore. Past highlights include a critically acclaimed production of John Adams’ Doctor Atomic (Curtis Opera Theater), Philip Glass’ Madrigal Opera (National Sawdust), David Lang’s little match girl passion (Perez Art Museum Miami, IlluminArts, The School | Jack Shainman Gallery), Philip Glass’ The Juniper Tree (Wolf Trap Opera), The House Taken Over (National Sawdust, Manhattan School of Music), Don Giovanni (Opera Philadelphia, Curtis Opera Theater), Turandot (Bard Music Festival), Macbeth (Syracuse Opera), Impressions du Pelleas (Curtis Opera Theater). Mr. Schlather has professional affiliations with Oper Frankfurt, The Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gran Theater del Liceu, Opera Philadelphia, National Sawdust, Curtis Institute of Music, Fisher Center Bard, Boston Lyric Opera, Tanglewood Music Festival, Hudson Opera House, IlluminArts, Wolf Trap Opera, International Contemporary Ensemble, Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Opera Omaha, Syracuse Opera, English National Opera, Canadian Opera Company, New York City Opera, Glimmerglass Opera, Gotham Chamber Opera, and (le) Poisson Rouge. He has lectured at Princeton University, New York University Tisch School of Arts, Banff Center for Arts and Creativity, and Brandeis University, given an artist talk at SITE Santa Fe, and taught at the Curtis Institute of Music and Ithaca College. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History, and Minor in Drama from Ithaca College. He was an Emerging Artist at Boston Lyric Opera during the 2014/2015 season, and an artist-in-residence at Brooklyn’s National Sawdust for the 2016/2017 season.