This site is currently undergoing a much-needed reconstruction. Please check back at the end of July 2026 to see the updated portfolio — Olga
Olga Maslova is a Ukrainian-born American costume and set designer, dramaturg and librettist. She was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and studied directing at the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture. After graduating, she hitchhiked through Russia and Ukraine, moving through the emerging post-Soviet art and theatre scene before immigrating to the United States.
Since then, Maslova has designed for theatre, opera, and dance across the United States, South America, Europe, and Asia. Her collaborators have included the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, Daniel Sullivan, Christopher Bayes, Daniel Helfgot, Ron Daniels, Nathan Gunn, and Pedro Salazar. Her work has been described by The New York Times as “stylish,” by Opera News as “spectacular,” and by The Boston Globe as both “beautiful” and “madly inventive.”
Recent projects include Our Road Home at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts in Houston; Black Square and Candinho at the Tryon Festival Theatre in Urbana, Illinois; Le nozze di Figaro and Tosca at Teatro Mayor in Bogotá, Colombia; and Peter Grimes at the historic Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil. Other selected designs include Everest and Aleko for Chicago Opera Theater at the Harris Theater, and Dido and Aeneas and Florencia en el Amazonas at Teatro Colón in Bogotá.
Maslova’s work frequently moves between visual design and dramaturgy. She co-wrote the libretto for the contemporary opera Black Square, inspired by Russian Futurism, and later designed the costumes for its fully staged orchestral production at Krannert Center in 2024. Her libretto for The Last Day of the Eternal City, an oratorio for reader, choir, and orchestra created with composer Ilya Demutsky, premiered at Moscow’s Zaryadye Hall in 2021.
Her designs have received international recognition. The production of Peter Grimes received the 2022 Premio CONCERTO award for best opera production of the year. Her costume design for The Golden Cockerel received an OPERNWELT Critics’ Choice nomination, and productions of Aleko and Mozart and Salieri, for which she designed both costumes and sets, received first-place awards in the professional division of the National Opera Association competition.
Maslova is a 2025 MacDowell Fellow and a 2021–2022 Fulbright U.S. Scholar. She is an Associate Professor of Costume Design at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she teaches costume design and history as well as courses she developed in the social psychology of clothing . She also created the international Costumes and Customs lecture series, bringing together artists and scholars to examine clothing traditions across cultures and historical periods.
Maslova holds a BFA in Directing, summa cum laude, from the Kharkiv State Academy of Culture; an MFA in Dramaturgy from Stony Brook University; and an MFA in Costume and Scenic Design from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.