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Christopher Milligan

Christopher Milligan began his role as The Harry Fath General Director and CEO of Cincinnati Opera on March 2, 2020, after twenty-two years with the company.

Chris most recently served as the company’s Managing Director, a role he held since 2010. As part of the company’s executive team, he worked closely with the board and senior staff in the management of the organization, the development of programming, and strategic planning. He maintained direct oversight for the functions of marketing, analytics, public relations, community engagement, educational programming, earned revenue, ticketing, and database management.

Chris’s first position with Cincinnati Opera was as a production intern in the summer of 1989. He joined the company full-time in 1997 as Director of Marketing. In this role, he led a team that achieved record-high attendance for numerous productions, including the 2005 world-premiere production of Margaret Garner. Chris has led the creation and development of industry-leading outreach programs including Opera Goes to Church, Opera Idol, and the company’s one-of-a-kind mobile theater in a truck called The Opera Express. He is a frequent contributing writer to Cincinnati Opera publications and regularly serves as a featured speaker for the company.

Before joining Cincinnati Opera, Chris was a program director at The Muse Machine in Dayton, Ohio. In this role, he developed and managed arts workshops, tours, and seminars in the Dayton area and beyond for hundreds of junior high and high school teachers. Originally from Kettering, Ohio, Chris is a graduate of Miami University. He has served as an adjunct faculty member for the university and as a member of the College of Creative Arts advisory board. He was the first recipient of the Marketer of the Year Award presented by the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Marketing Association, and he is an alumnus of Leadership Cincinnati Class 32. He lives in Lebanon, Ohio, with his wife, Molly. They have three daughters.