Within a short time, Damiano Michieletto has emerged on the international scene as one of the most interesting representatives of the young generation of Italian directors. He studied opera and theater production at Milan's Paolo Grassi School of Dramatic Art and graduated in modern literature from the University of Venice, his hometown.

His critically acclaimed production of Švanda the Piper by Jaromír Weinberger at the 2003 Wexford Festival won the Irish Times ESB Theatre Award. His other opera productions include L' Italiana in Algeri at Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, La gazza ladra in a co-production of the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro with the theaters of Bologna and Verona (the production won the Franco Abbiati Prize in 2008), Lucia di Lammermoor, Il Corsaro, Luisa Miller and Poliuto to Zurich, Roméo et Juliette and a Mozart/from Ponte cycle at Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Die Entführung aus dem Serail at San Carlo in Naples, La scala di seta at Rossini Opera Festival and Teatro alla Scala in Milan, Il Barbiere di Siviglia at Grand Théâtre de Genève, Madama Butterfly to Turin, L'elisir d'amore to Valencia, Graz and Madrid, Martinů's The Greek Passion to Palermo, Così fan tutte at New National Theatre in Tokyo, Trittico at Theater an der Wien and Royal Opera Copenhagen, Un ballo in maschera at Teatro alla Scala, Idomeneo at Theater an der Wien and The Rake's Progress at Opernhaus Leipzig and La Fenice in Venice.

He made his Salzburg Festival debut with La Bohème in 2012 and returned there for Falstaff in 2013 and La cenerentola in 2014. The 2014/15 season includes Il viaggio to Reims at the Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam and Guillaume Tell at the Royal Opera House in London.

Engagements for the 2015/2016 season include new productions of Mozart's The Magic Flute at La Fenice in Venice, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at London's Covent Garden (Olivier Award 2016), and Rossini's Otello to Vienna; a debut at the Komische Oper in Berlin with Massenet's Cendrillon; and a return to the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro with a new production of La donna del lago.

In 2016 and 2017 he was busy with new productions of Saint-Saëns' Samson et Dalila at the Paris Opéra, Perocco's Aquagranda at La Fenice in Venice (2017 Abbiati Prize), Falstaff at La Scala in Milan, Die Zauberflöte atOpera in Florence, Idomeneo for the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino to Pistoia, Rigoletto atOpera in Amsterdam, and La damnation de Faust for the opening ofOpera in Rome (Abbiati Prize 2018).

During the course of 2018, the director is busy making his debut at the Bol'šoj Theater in Moscow with Il viaggio to Reims and with four new productions: Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe at Fenice in Venice, to Britten's Midsummer night's dream at Theater an der Wien in Vienna, Donizetti's Don Pasquale at Palais Garnier - Opéra de Paris, and Verdi's Macbeth to Venice (season opener).

Recent appointments include: new productions of Schreker's Der Ferne Klang to Frankfurt and Händel's Alcina at the Salzburg Festival (Pentecost and summer festival), filming of La Scala di seta at the Royal Opera House in Muscat, Don Pasquale to Paris and to London, Die Lustige Witwe to Rome, Il viaggio to Reims to Melbourne and Sydney, Luisa Miller and Cavalleria rusticana/Pagliacci to Barcelona; as well as new productions of Rigoletto staged at the Circus Maximus - from which spawned a project for the big screen produced from Indigo Film with the Teatro dell'Opera in Rome - and Berlioz' Béatrice et Bénédict atOpera in Lyon. Among his 2021 engagements: New stagings of two Janáček operas, namely Jenůfa to debut at the Berlin Staatsoper and Kát'to Kabanová at the Glyndebourne Festival, and of Strauss, Salome at Teatro alla Scala in Milan (broadcast on Rai5) and Der Rosenkavalier to Vilnius, joined by a film on Puccini's Gianni Schicchi for Genoma Films, Rigoletto at La Fenice in Venice (the production won the Franco Abbiati Prize in 2022) and La cenerentola at the Semperoper in Dresden. In 2022, he staged the Italian premiere of Béatrice et Bénédict for the season opening of the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa and several new productions: Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice at the Komische Oper in Berlin, Battistelli's Le baruffe at Teatro La Fenice (with libretto by Michieletto), Handel's Giulio Cesare in Egitto at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, and the Italian premiere of Mass, a Bernstein theater piece, at the Terme di Caracalla to Rome. In addition, he presented "Archèus. Labyrinth Mozart," a multidisciplinary immersive installation created for the Venice Biennale, celebrating the 1600th anniversary of the lagoon city.

In 2023 he stages at De Nationale Opera in Amsterdam the world premiere of Animal Farm based on George Orwell's famous novel of the same name and composed from Alexander Raskatov and two new productions: Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Sydney Opera House and Aida marking his debut at the Bayerische Staatsoper. In 2024 he will be engaged in new productions at La Scala Cherubini's Médée, at the Royal Opera House Carmen and atOpera Paris Massenet's Don Quichotte.

In addition to his intense activity in opera theater, Damiano Michieletto is also very active in prose theater, equally important in his artistic career. He staged a highly original and much-appreciated edition of Goldoni's Il Ventaglio to which was followed by Gogol's L'Ispettore generale with the Teatro Stabile del Veneto, in a corrosive and engaging vision, Ramón María del Valle-Inclán's Divinas palabras for the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, a fundamental and visionary text of 20th-century Spanish theater, the new production of L'Opera from three soldi by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, and Čechov's one-acts The Marriage Question/The Bear with Teatro Stabile del Veneto at Teatro Goldoni in Venice (broadcast on Rai5).