Nicolas Joel was born in France. He is the director of the Opera National de Paris since 2009 and before that was the artistic director of the opera in Toulouse. He has directed opera productions in all leading opera houses around the world including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, La Scala in Milan, the Vienna Staatsoper, the Arena di Verona and the opera houses of San Francisco, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Zurich, Essen, Bremen, Madrid, Lausanne, Buenos Aires, Palermo, Nancy, Nice, Lyon, Orange, Turin, Genoa, Tokyo, Naples, Chicago and many others including of course numerous production in Toulouse and in Paris. His numerous productions include Otello, Falstaff, Aida, Rigoletto, La traviata, La forza del destino, Ernani (Verdi), Samson et Dalila (Saint-Saens), Parsifal, Lohengrin, Der Ring des Nibelungen (Wagner), Cavalleria rusticana (Mascagni), Pagliacci (Leoncavallo), Romeo et Juliette (Gounod), Turandot (Puccini), Thais (Massenet), La Gioconda.

At the Israeli Opera he directed:
La Rondine (2015)
Tosca at Masada (2015)
Les Contes d'Hoffmann (2007)