James Meena

James Meena General Director and Principal Conductor of Opera Carolina
James Meena conducting a December 2007 music rehearsal of the Opera Carolina Chorus for the company's 2008 production of Aida.
Born	1951
Residence	Charlotte, North Carolina
Alma mater	Carnegie Mellon University
Occupation	Opera conductor and Administrator
Years active	1980-Present
Agent	Bernard Uzan, Uzan International Artist

James Meena (born 1951) is an American conductor and opera administrator. Formerly the General Director and Principal Conductor of Toledo Opera in Ohio, since 2000 he has been the General Director and Principal Conductor of Opera Carolina, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Meena was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of an Antiochian Orthodox priest who had also studied composition and wrote three hymnals as well as translating Tchaikovsky's Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom into English. He spent his childhood in Los Angeles and Pittsburgh before returning to Cleveland when his father became pastor of the St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church there. Meena did his undergraduate studies at Baldwin Wallace College Conservatory of Music, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973, and then taught music for three years in Cleveland's high schools as well as singing in the Cleveland Symphony Chorus. He studied conducting with Robert Page, the chorus's Director and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University where Meena received his Master of Fine Arts in conducting in 1978. When Page became Director of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh in September 1979, he hired Meena as his assistant. He also studied conducting with Thomas Mihalak, who was Music Director of the New Jersey Symphony for six seasons; the opera conductor Rudolph Fellner; and Boris Halip, a former conductor of the Bolshoi Ballet who had emigrated to Cleveland and with whom Meena also studied violin.