News: OPERNWELT critic's nomination for the best costume design for the THE GOLDEN COCKEREL, October 2017
“We were constantly astonished by the [Olga’s] originality which is difficult to describe”
Olga Maslova is Ukrainian born -American designer and dramaturg. She was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, earned BFA in directing from Kharkov's Academy of Culture, and hitchhiked through post-USSR art and theatre scene in Russia and Ukraine before moving to USA. Since then she designed costumes and sets for many prominent directors and choreographers in USA, South America and Europe. Among them are Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane Company, Dan Sullivan, Christopher Bayes, Daniel Helfgot, Ron Daniels, Pedro Salazar and many others. New York Times hailed her costumes as "stylish", and Boston Globe as "beautiful". Opera News Magazine called her costumes ''spectacular", Backstage hailed Three Sisters attire "authentic", her creativity has been described from "eye popping" to "madly inventive". Recent highlights include costumes for the operas Le Nozze di Figaro (2022) and Tosca (2021) at Teatro Mayor, Bogota, Colombia, opera Peter Grimes (2022) at the famed Amazonas Theatre in Manaus, Brazil, Last Day of the Eternal City, an oratorio for a reader, choir and an orchestra, with Olga’s libretto, premiered in Moscow, Russia, in November 2021, costume and set design for operas Everest and Aleko, for Chicago Opera Theatre, at the Harris Theatre, Chicago (2019), operas Dido and Aeneas and Florencia en el Amazonas at Teatro Colon, Bogota, Colombia.
Olga co- wrote a libretto for the opera Black Square, with a prominent Russian composer Ilya Demutsky and director Igor Khonyukhov. The world premiere of the on site production of the opera took place at Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, Russia, on November 27th, 2018, with the eponymous 1915 painting “Black Square” by Kasimir Malevich being part of the scenery. The workshop of the scenes from the opera was premiered on December 13th 2017 at Tryon Festival Theatre, Urbana, IL.
Olga is an associate professor of costume design at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She received BFA with honors in Directing from the State Academy of Culture, Kharkov, Ukraine, MFA in Dramaturgy with honors from Stony Brook University, and MFA in costume and set design from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts.