Donald Pippin (opera director)

Donald Pippin (Zebulon, North Carolina, December 8, 1925—San Francisco, California, July 7, 2021[1][2]) was an American pianist, and founder of Pocket Opera.

[3][4] Born in Zebulon, North Carolina and educated at Harvard University, Pippin began his career as an accompanist at George Balanchine's School of American Ballet in New York City.

Audiences have followed him from his start at the hungry i and Opus One in North Beach, through nearly two decades of presenting a weekly chamber music series (1960-1978) at the Old Spaghetti Factory, to his present-day fame as the creator of one of San Francisco's most popular operatic institutions.

Pippin's first translation came in 1968, in the course of preparing Mozart's one-act opera Bastien und Bastienne for performance as part of his chamber music series.

From that point on, Pippin dedicated himself to the task of producing literate English versions of both well-loved classics and lesser-known gems of operatic literature.