Board & Leadership

Stephen Schwartz is one of Broadway's most celebrated composer-lyricists, whose work has shaped the popular musical theater landscape for more than five decades. Best known for WICKED — one of the longest-running shows in Broadway history — he has also brought audiences GODSPELL, PIPPIN, THE MAGIC SHOW, THE BAKER'S WIFE, WORKING (which he also adapted and directed), RAGS, CHILDREN OF EDEN, and THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES.

In film, Schwartz wrote the songs for DreamWorks' THE PRINCE OF EGYPT and co-wrote songs with Alan Menken for three beloved Disney classics: POCAHONTAS, THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME, and ENCHANTED. In the classical world, he contributed English texts to Leonard Bernstein's MASS and composed the opera SEANCE ON A WET AFTERNOON, produced at Opera Santa Barbara and New York City Opera.

Schwartz holds a place in the Theatre Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His honors include three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and a special Tony Award recognizing his decades of investment in emerging theatrical talent.

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Peter Sellars occupies a singular place in contemporary opera as a director whose work consistently redefines what the art form can accomplish. Over four decades, he has mounted acclaimed productions at the Dutch National Opera, the English National Opera, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Paris Opéra, the San Francisco Opera, and the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence. His relationship with the Salzburg Festival — where he debuted with Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise in 1992 — has included productions of Le Grand Macabre (1997), La clemenza di Tito (2017), and Idomeneo (2019).

Sellars's long creative partnership with composer John Adams has produced some of the most important operas of our era, including Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer, El Niño, Doctor Atomic, A Flowering Tree, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, and Girls of the Golden West. He has been an essential champion of composer Kaija Saariaho, guiding the world premiere of L'Amour de loin at Salzburg in 2000 and numerous subsequent productions of her work.

A distinguished professor in the Department of World Arts and Culture at UCLA, Sellars has directed major arts festivals including the Los Angeles Festivals of 1990 and 1993 and the 2002 Adelaide Festival of Arts. In 2006, he served as artistic director of New Crowned Hope — a month-long festival in Vienna celebrating the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. His honors include the MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize, the Gish Prize, the Polar Music Prize, and Musical America's Artist of the Year for 2014. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Richard Danielpour is an American composer whose work spans a wide range of forms — from orchestral and chamber music to opera and choral writing. Born in New York City in 1956, he trained at Oberlin College and the New England Conservatory before earning his doctorate from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Vincent Persichetti and Peter Mennin.

Early in his career, Danielpour worked within a serial framework before evolving toward a more inclusive musical language in the late 1980s — one that embraces tonality, lyricism, and expressive directness. His output includes three symphonies, four piano concertos, the ballet Anima mundi, and the opera Margaret Garner, for which Nobel laureate Toni Morrison wrote the libretto. His vocal work The Passion of Yeshua earned a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Classical Composition.

Danielpour taught at the Manhattan School of Music from 1993 to 2017 and joined the Curtis Institute of Music faculty in 1997. Since 2017, he has served as a professor at UCLA's Herb Alpert School of Music — continuing to compose, mentor emerging artists, and shape the next generation of classical composers.

American bass Peter Volpe has built one of the most admired careers in contemporary opera — described by The New York Times as possessing a "stentorian and robust" voice of commanding presence. A professor of voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, Volpe brings more than 35 years of stage experience and a repertoire exceeding 90 roles in six languages to both the podium and the classroom.

His Metropolitan Opera debut in Prokofiev's War and Peace launched 13 consecutive seasons with the company — a testament to his standing in the art form. His broader career has taken him to the Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Oper Stuttgart, Vancouver Opera, New York City Opera, and Spoleto Festival USA, as well as opera houses in Montreal, Tokyo, Shanghai, Beijing, Prague, and Düsseldorf.

Among his most celebrated portrayals are the title role in Don Giovanni, King Philip II in Don Carlo, Méphistophélès in Faust, Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, and Sparafucile in Rigoletto. Throughout his career, Volpe has collaborated with some of the most distinguished conductors of his generation, including James Levine, Seiji Ozawa, Valery Gergiev, Sir John Pritchard, and Semyon Bychkov.

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Dubbed "opera's coolest soprano" by The New York Times Magazine, Danielle de Niese has forged an artistic identity that defies easy categorization — equally at home in the grandeur of the world's great opera houses and in more intimate concert and recording settings. Her performances are celebrated for combining vocal brilliance with rare communicative power and a captivating physical presence on stage.

De Niese's operatic engagements have taken her to Glyndebourne Festival Opera, LA Opera, Teatro alla Scala, San Francisco Opera, Hamburg State Opera, and the English National Opera. On the West End, she has appeared in Man of La Mancha and Andrew Lloyd Webber's Aspects of Love.

Her debut album of Handel Arias won both the Orphée d'Or and the ECHO Klassik award. Subsequent recordings include The Mozart Album, Diva, and Beauty of the Baroque. Beyond the stage, de Niese is a committed advocate for music education and children's welfare, serving as an Ambassador for the Prince of Wales' Foundation for Children and the Arts.

John Corigliano stands among the most acclaimed and distinctive voices in American classical music. Over more than four decades, his catalog of over one hundred compositions has earned the Pulitzer Prize, the Grawemeyer Award, five Grammy Awards, and an Academy Award — a constellation of honors rare in any creative area.

His three symphonies occupy a central place in his legacy. Symphony No. 1 (1991), born from personal grief over losses to the AIDS crisis, has been performed by more than three hundred orchestras worldwide and earned the Grawemeyer Award. Symphony No. 2 (2001) took the Pulitzer Prize in Music following its Boston Symphony Orchestra premiere. His theatrical instincts are equally evident in ten concertos, including The Red Violin Concerto (2005), written for Joshua Bell and developed from his Oscar-winning film score.

For opera, Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles (1991) was the Metropolitan Opera's first commission in over thirty years, establishing him as Musical America's inaugural Composer of the Year. After a three-decade absence from the operatic stage, he returned with The Lord of Cries in 2021. Born in New York City in 1938 — the son of John Corigliano Sr., longtime concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic — he has spent his entire life in the city and continues to teach on the composition faculty at the Juilliard School.

Alyson Cambridge is one of the most versatile and captivating voices in the music scene today. For more than two decades, the American soprano's career has ranged across the full vocal artistic spectrum — from the great operatic stages of the world, to Broadway, jazz, and in concert performances worldwide. She has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, London's Royal Albert Hall, Deutsche Oper Berlin, and The Broadway Theatre in New York.

As a lirico spinto soprano, Cambridge has made the heroines of Puccini, Mozart, and Bizet her calling card -- the roles of Tosca, Donna Elvira, and Carmen frequently among them. She is equally celebrated in musical theater — most notably in Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, and The Sound of Music — and made her Broadway debut in 2018. Her recordings include From the Diary of Sally Hemings, Until Now, and Sisters In Song.

Beyond the stage, Cambridge maintains an active presence in modeling and television, with appearances in major commercial and brand campaigns, and can be seen on NBC's Law & Order and Bravo's Kings Court. She is the founder of Cambridge Productions & Purpose, a producing organization dedicated to creating meaningful live musical and theatrical events and shows, and gives generously to causes close to her heart including Daniel's Music Foundation, Sing for Hope, and The Fresh Air Fund.

French baritone Jean-Philippe Lafont is one of his generation's finest interpreters of the French and Italian repertoire. Born in Toulouse on February 11, 1951, he trained at the Opéra-Studio in Paris and made his operatic debut as Papageno in The Magic Flute at the Salle Favart in 1974. His relationship with Toulouse opera remained close throughout his career, where he first tackled the title role of Verdi's Falstaff in 1987.

His career has taken him to the world's most prestigious stages, including the Opéra-Comique in Paris, Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, and the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. He is renowned for his portrayals of the four villains in The Tales of Hoffmann, the Comte des Grieux in Manon, Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande, Barak in Die Frau ohne Schatten, and the title roles in Gianni Schicchi, Rigoletto, Boris Godunov, and Macbeth.

His discography — spanning composers from Auber and Berlioz to Bizet, Debussy, Gluck, Gounod, Offenbach, and Verdi — documents a career of remarkable breadth and artistic authority.

Sylvie Valayre is a soprano of uncommon breadth and theatrical intensity whose path to the operatic stage was as unconventional as it was inevitable. Born near the Bastille in Paris, she resolved to dedicate her life to performance as a young child — a conviction shaped by growing up alongside two musically gifted brothers. She pursued music and theatre simultaneously throughout her adolescence, earning a master's degree in Anglo-American Studies before committing fully to the operatic stage.

Her formal training took her to the Paris Conservatoire, where she studied under Christiane Eda-Pierre and Gabriel Bacquier. Masterclasses with Cathy Berberian, Galina Vichnevskaia, and Giuseppe Di Stefano deepened her artistry — and it was Di Stefano himself who invited her to perform at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Her repertoire spans a wide range of operatic styles, with distinguished work in Mozart and Rimsky-Korsakov's The Czar's Bride among her notable achievements.

Valayre has graced the stages of La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden, and Carnegie Hall. Her signature interpretations of Lady Macbeth and Salome have earned particular acclaim for their psychological depth and vocal power.

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Kent Nagano is among the most respected conductors of his generation, admired for the intellectual depth and clarity he brings to both operatic and symphonic repertoire. He holds honorary conductor designations with the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg (since 2023), Concerto Köln (since 2019), and the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (since 2021), and has served as Conductor Laureate of the Deutsche Symphonie Orchester Berlin since 2006.

His tenure as General Music Director in Hamburg, which concluded in the 2024/25 season, produced a series of landmark opera productions — among them Boris Godunov, Salome, Peter Grimes, Les Troyens, and Lulu. A committed champion of new music, Nagano has led world premieres by John Adams, Pascal Dusapin, and George Benjamin, and his Grammy-winning recordings span works by Busoni, Penderecki, and Saariaho.

Nagano's honors include honorary doctorates from McGill University and the Université de Montréal, France's Ordre des arts et des lettres, Germany's Order of Merit (2024), the Order of Canada (2024), and the 2024 Brahms Prize. He has also published two books: Erwachen Sie Wunder! (2015) and 10 Lessons of my Life (2021).

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Dame Felicity Palmer is one of Britain's most distinguished and enduring vocal artists. Born on April 6, 1944, and raised in Cheltenham, she trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and later at the Munich College for Music and Theatre under Marianne Schech. In 1970, she won first prize in the prestigious Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship competition — an early signal of the exceptional career ahead.

Originally a soprano, Palmer launched her operatic career in 1971 as Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Kent Opera before transitioning to mezzo-soprano in 1983. She made her U.S. debut with Houston Grand Opera in 1973, joined the English National Opera in 1975, and made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 2000 as Waltraute in Götterdämmerung. Forty years after her ENO debut, she returned to the company as the Countess in The Queen of Spades to widespread critical praise.

Palmer is particularly celebrated for her portrayal of Madame de Croissy in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites and for creating the role of Mrs Lovett in the 2003 Royal Opera House production of Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd. She serves as a professor at the Royal College of Music in London, received the CBE in 1993, and was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2011 New Year Honours.

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Maria Guleghina is widely recognized as one of the defining dramatic sopranos of her era. Born in Odesa, Ukrainian SSR, on August 9, 1959, she trained at the Music Conservatory and made her professional stage debut in 1985 at the State Opera in Minsk. Her rise to international prominence was swift: by 1987, she was performing opposite Luciano Pavarotti at La Scala in Un ballo in maschera — a debut that signaled her arrival on the world stage.

Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in January 1991 in Andrea Chénier, and she would return to perform there more than 160 times over the following decades. Her international career has encompassed the San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Vienna State Opera, and Teatro alla Scala, where she has also given solo recitals. Her repertoire includes major roles in Ernani, Simon Boccanegra, Nabucco, Cavalleria rusticana, Macbeth, and, in recent seasons, Wagner's Parsifal.

Guleghina's voice — warm, powerful, and capable of remarkable dynamic range — combined with her commanding stage presence has made her a singular figure in the art form.

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John Cameron Mitchell is a singular creative force at the intersection of rock, theater, film, and performance art. As the writer, director, and star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, he created a cultural phenomenon that earned him the 2014 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical, a Special Tony for his performance, an Obie Award, Best Director at the 2001 Sundance Festival, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, and more than two dozen additional honors.

Mitchell directed the critically acclaimed Shortbus (2006), a film exploring intimacy and connection developed through improvisation, and adapted the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Rabbit Hole to film (2010), earning Nicole Kidman an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. His stage work includes original cast appearances in the Tony-winning musicals Big River, The Secret Garden, and Six Degrees of Separation. His television credits span Girls, Shrill, The Good Fight, Mozart in the Jungle, Yellowjackets, The Sandman, and City on Fire.

Mitchell received the 2007 Dorothy Hirshon Award for Cinematic Achievement and the 2019 Excellence in Acting Award from the Provincetown Film Festival. He is currently developing Temple House, a nonprofit artists residency in New Orleans dedicated to fostering creative community.

Jason Graae is one of American musical theater's most beloved performers — a consummate entertainer whose work on Broadway, in opera, and on the cabaret stage has earned him a devoted following and consistent critical acclaim. His Broadway credits include A Grand Night For Singing, Falsettos, Stardust, Snoopy!, and Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?, and his Off-Broadway work includes Forever Plaid, Olympus on My Mind, and All in the Timing, among many others. He made his Metropolitan Opera House debut as the male vocalist in Twyla Tharp's Everlast with American Ballet Theatre.

Graae's one-man shows have toured nationally, from Rainbow and Stars and Birdland in New York City to Feinstein's and the Plush Room in Los Angeles — earning him four Bistro Awards and a New York Nightlife Award. His partnership with Faith Prince in The Prince and the Showboy earned a second Nightlife Award for Best Duo.

In opera, he made his Los Angeles Opera debut as Njegus in The Merry Widow and appeared as Frosch in Die Fledermaus at both Washington National Opera and San Francisco Opera. His television credits include Friends, Frasier, Six Feet Under, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. With more than 45 CDs to his name — including original cast albums and two solo recordings — his legacy on disc is as rich as his stage career.

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June Squibb's career in American performance spans more than six decades — a testament to her enduring gifts and the remarkable depth of her work across stage, film, and television. She made her Broadway debut in 1959 in the original production of Gypsy alongside Ethel Merman. Born in Vandalia, Illinois, she trained at HB Studio and spent formative years at the Cleveland Play House before making her home in New York.

Her breakthrough to wide recognition came with Alexander Payne's Nebraska (2013), in which she delivered a performance that earned Academy Award, Golden Globe, and SAG nominations. In 2024, at age 94, she stepped into her first leading film role in the action comedy Thelma — a milestone underscoring her extraordinary artistic longevity. Her film work also includes Scent of a Woman, The Age of Innocence, About Schmidt, Toy Story 4, Inside Out 2, and Soul. Television audiences have known her from The Big Bang Theory, Grey's Anatomy, Shameless, Girls, and Glee.

Squibb last appeared on Broadway in Waitress (2018) and continued voicing characters in several animated films. Her career stands as a testament to enduring artistic creativity across more than six decades of performance.

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Betty Buckley is a Tony Award-winning actress and singer whose artistry has graced virtually every major performance medium across five decades. She won the Tony for playing Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats and received a second Tony nomination for Best Actress in a Musical for Triumph of Love. Her portrayal of Norma Desmond in the London production of Sunset Boulevard earned an Olivier nomination and later came to Broadway. She was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame in 2012.

Her Broadway credits include 1776, Pippin, Song and Dance, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Carrie, and the national tour of Hello, Dolly! On screen, she appeared in Brian De Palma's iconic Carrie and in films by Bruce Beresford, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen, and M. Night Shyamalan — with recent credits including Split with James McAvoy and Imaginary (2024). In 2022, she released a tribute recording celebrating the songs of Stephen Sondheim.

For over forty-five years, Buckley has taught scene study and song interpretation at conservatories and universities across the country, serving as Artist in Residence at Mercyhurst University. With 18 recordings to her name and a teaching legacy spanning generations, her commitment to the craft of performance — as artist, educator, and mentor — defines her enduring influence.

Sona Ghazarian is a Lebanese-Austrian soprano and Kammersängerin of the Republic of Austria — one of the most celebrated Mozart and lyric soprano specialists of the twentieth century. Born in Beirut on September 2, 1945, she pursued parallel studies in psychology at the American University of Beirut and voice at the National Conservatory, before deepening her training at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome.

In 1972, Ghazarian joined the Vienna State Opera, where she would remain for more than two decades — amassing 384 performances and building a repertoire of over 70 roles spanning Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, and Strauss. Among her most beloved portrayals were Oscar in Un ballo in maschera and Violetta in La Traviata. Her relationship with the Salzburg Festival began in 1973 and included acclaimed appearances as Barbarina in Le nozze di Figaro, Blonde in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1975), and Marzelline in Fidelio (1983). Her Metropolitan Opera debut came in 1987 as Adina in L'elisir d'amore.

Beyond Vienna, Ghazarian performed at La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, and prestigious festivals in Salzburg and Bregenz. Through masterclasses and mentorship carried on across a 50-year career, she became an ambassador of Viennese operatic tradition and a transformative presence for emerging generations of singers.

Australian actress, singer, and dancer Sarah Bowden has built an international career of remarkable scope, performing across Berlin, New York, Vienna, and beyond. A central figure in Berlin's vibrant theater scene, she has appeared at the Wintergarten Variety Theatre and Komische Oper Berlin, and starred in major productions including Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame in both Berlin and Munich.

Bowden's stage credits span the full range of musical theater: A Chorus Line (as Cassie) at the Hollywood Bowl and in Klagenfurt; West Side Story (as Anita) in Wuppertal; Cabaret (as Sally Bowles); and numerous Stage Entertainment productions in Vienna, including Tanz der Vampire, We Will Rock You, and Catch Me If You Can. She served as Associate Choreographer and Dance Captain on the world tour of Dirty Dancing and performed as Rumpleteaser in the Cats production at Tokyo's Disney Resort.

Most recently, Bowden joined the Broadway company of Moulin Rouge! The Musical as Nini — returning to a production she first joined during its original long-running run on Broadway.

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Richard Maltby Jr. is one of American theater's most decorated director-lyricists. Born on October 6, 1937, in Ripon, Wisconsin, he is the only person to have conceived and directed two musical revues that won the Tony Award for Best Musical: Ain't Misbehavin' (1978) — for which he also won the Tony for Best Director — and Fosse (1999).

Maltby's creative partnership with composer David Shire, forged as undergraduates at Yale University, has produced some of the most cherished works in the American musical canon. Their first Broadway credit came in 1968 in New Faces of 1968, for "The Girl of the Minute", followed nine years later by the Manhattan Theatre Club's 1977 production of "Starting Here, Starting Now" — which launched an extended Off-Broadway run and earned a Grammy nomination for its cast album. Major collaborations include "Baby" (1983), "Song and Dance" (1986), "Miss Saigon" (1989, co-lyricist), "Big" (1996), "Ring of Fire" (2006), and "The Pirate Queen" (2007). Their off-Broadway revue "Closer Than Ever" (1989) won the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical. He also wrote the screenplay for the film Miss Potter (2007).

Their most recent collaboration, Take Flight (with book by John Weidman), has been produced in London, Japan, and the United States — evidence of a creative partnership that has left an indelible mark on theatrical history.

David Shire is an American composer, pianist, and arranger whose career has encompassed Broadway, Hollywood, and the concert hall across more than six decades. Born in Buffalo, New York, on July 3, 1937, he met his long-time collaborator, lyricist Richard Maltby Jr., as undergraduates at Yale University — where he graduated magna cum laude with a double major in English and music and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa. While at school both wrote two musicals, "Cyrano" and "Grand Tour", which were produced by the Yale Dramatic Association. Their creative collaboration continued after graduation with an off-Broadway show "The Sap of Life" in 1961. Together, Maltby and Shire have built one of the most enduring creative partnerships in American musical theatre. Their work includes the Broadway musicals "Baby" (1983) and "Big" (1996) — both Tony-nominated for Best Score and for a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical — and the beloved Off-Broadway revues "Starting Here, Starting Now" (Grammy-nominated, 1977) and "Closer Than Ever" (1989), winner of the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Musical and Best Score. Their most recent collaboration, Take Flight (book by John Weidman), has been produced in London (2007) and Japan (2008), and had its American premiere in May 2010. Besides writing original shows they also contributed material to shows conceived by others like the revue "Urban Blight" in 1988.

David Shire wrote incidental music for the stage (Peter Ustinov's "The Unknown Soldier and His Wife" at Lincoln Center 1967 and "As You Like It" for the NY Shakespeare Festival in 1973). Off-Broadway productions with his music have included "Smulnik's Waltz" in 1991, Donald Margulies's "The Loman Family Picnic" in 1993, and "Visiting Mr. Green" in 1997. During the 60's he was involved with writing music scores and theme music for television and in the 70's extended his composing efforts to the film industry with an impressive record of scores to at least 42 films, starting with "The Conversation" in 1974 to "Beyond a Reasonable Doubt" in 2009, including "Two People", "All the President's Men", "The Hindenburg", "Farewell My Lovely", "The Taking of Pelham", "One-Two-Three", "2010", "Return to Oz", "Max Dugan Returns", and "Zodiac". For his original music for "Saturday Night Fever" (1977) he received a Grammy Award® (Album of the Year) and a Golden Globe nomination. His song "It Goes Like It Goes" from "Norma Rae" (1979) won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Shire has also supplied nearly 90 scores for television series or movies made for TV, for which he received five nominations for Emmy Awards. Earlier in his career, he served as rehearsal pianist and accompanist for Barbra Streisand during the original run of Funny Girl.

He serves on the executive council of the Dramatists Guild of America and as a Trustee of the Rockland Conservatory of Music.

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Michel van der Aa is a Dutch composer, director, and multimedia artist whose work consistently expands the boundaries of opera, music theater, and concert performance. Born in 1970, he brings an unusually integrated set of skills to his practice: training in recording engineering at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, composition study with Diderik Wagenaar, Gilius van Bergeijk, and Louis Andriessen, film direction at the New York Film Academy, and stage direction at Lincoln Center Theater Director's Lab.

Van der Aa's defining approach is the seamless fusion of acoustic and electronic sound with visual and cinematic elements — not as embellishment, but as structural forces within the work itself. He collaborates with some of the most adventurous performers in contemporary classical music, including Sol Gabetta, Janine Jansen, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Julia Bullock, Barbara Hannigan, Abel Selaocoe, and Roderick Williams. Major music theater works include The Book of Water (2021–22), Upload (2019–20), Eight (2018–19), Blank Out (2015–16), Sunken Garden (2011–12), The Book of Disquiet (2008), After Life (2005–06), and One (2002).

His work has been presented in over 45 countries at venues including the Barbican Centre, Opéra de Lyon, Berliner Festspiele, Venice Biennale, LA Philharmonic, and Lincoln Centre Festival. Awards include the International Gaudeamus Prize (1999), the Grawemeyer Award (2013), the Johannes Vermeer Award (2015), and the International Opera Award (2022).

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Francisco Araiza is one of the most admired lyric tenors of the late twentieth century — a singer who combined exceptional refinement as a Mozart and Rossini interpreter with the expressive depth of a committed Lieder artist. He trained in voice with Irma Gonzalez at the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica in Mexico, also earning a degree in business administration, before his prize-winning performance at the ARD International Music Competition in Munich in 1974 opened the doors of the world's leading opera houses.

The pivotal moment in Araiza's international career came when Herbert von Karajan invited him to record the role of Tamino for his celebrated 1980 Magic Flute and to perform it at the Salzburg Festival. That collaboration launched a distinguished career on the world stage and, in 1988, earned him the title of Kammersänger of the Vienna State Opera. His recorded legacy encompasses over 100 titles on CD and DVD.

Since the late 1990s, Araiza has channeled his experience into teaching, conducting masterclasses, and serving on competition juries. From 2003 to 2016 he held a professorship at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst Stuttgart and served as Artistic Director of the prestigious International Hugo Wolf Academy.

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Sinéad O'Neill is a critically acclaimed, award-winning director whose productions are recognized for their visceral physicality, striking visual language, and profound musical intelligence. Equally at home working with a solo performer or a large ensemble, she brings a distinctive creative vision to every project she undertakes.

Her world premiere production of Uprising by Jonathan Dove and April De Angelis won the RPS Opera and Music Theatre Award 2026. Her site-specific promenade performance Precipice at The Grange Festival has drawn wide acclaim for its haunting imagery, ambitious scope, and incantatory text. Her upcoming production of Orlando for Longborough Festival Opera (2026) continues a body of work marked by imaginative depth and bold theatrical thinking.

O'Neill has developed numerous new works alongside composer Matt Rogers — including Amor Mundi (conceived and written by Zsuzsanna Ardó), The Raven, On the Axis of this World, and And London Burned — and co-created Pay the Piper with composers Ailie Robertson, Cecilia Livingstone, Ninfea Crutwell-Reade, and Anna Appleby, presented by Glyndebourne Youth Opera in 2022.

Other directing credits include The Spectre Knight at Wexford Festival Opera; productions of El gato con botas, L'enfant et les sortilèges, Alcina, The Sofa, and Calisto at the Royal Irish Academy of Music, Dublin; two BBC Proms for Glyndebourne; the Glyndebourne Opera Cup with Sky Arts; the 50th Anniversary Gala at Queen Elizabeth Hall; and revivals of Il barbiere di Siviglia and L'elisir d'amore.

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A versatile performer with more than two decades on stage, Nikki Renée Daniels has built one of the most distinguished careers in American musical theatre. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, she studied at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music and made her Broadway debut in Aida in 2000.

Among her many Broadway roles are Fantine in Les Misérables, Clara in Porgy & Bess, Nabulungi in The Book of Mormon (2014–2018), and Jenny in Company (2021–2022), in which she stepped into the role of Bobbie — a historic milestone as the first Black actor to lead that part on Broadway. Most recently she played Lady Larken in the 2024 revival of Once Upon a Mattress, and she contributed to the vocal ensemble of the Wicked film.

A sought-after concert artist, Nikki has appeared as featured soloist with orchestras across the United States and abroad, performing at venues including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center's David Geffen Hall. Her television work includes appearances on Billions and The Equalizer, and she released her solo debut album, Home, in 2012.

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Andrew Lippa is a Tony-nominated composer, lyricist, and performer whose work spans Broadway, concert halls, and film. His Broadway credits include The Addams Family (Tony nomination, Best Original Score), Big Fish (directed by Susan Stroman), and The Wild Party (Drama Desk Award). His revision of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown earned a Grammy nomination.

His large-scale oratorio I Am Harvey Milk has been produced more than 50 times at venues including Walt Disney Concert Hall and Lincoln Center. As a songwriter for film and television, he wrote "Evil Like Me" for Disney's Descendants, which reached #1 on the Billboard 200 and was certified gold, and shared an Emmy Award for Nickelodeon's The Wonder Pets.

A graduate of the University of Michigan and a Fellow of Leeds Conservatoire, Lippa has conducted at Carnegie Hall, the Metropolitan Opera House, and Royal Festival Hall. He has served as music director for Kristin Chenoweth since 1999 and has led orchestras worldwide, including alongside pianist Lang Lang and the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra. He currently serves as president of the Dramatists Guild Foundation board.

American conductor, Winston Dan Vogel , has distinguished himself on six continents as a dynamic conductor, forceful orchestra builder, imaginative program creator, composer and effective lecturer. As past music director and conductor of both the Virginia Symphony and the Shore Festival of Classics in New Jersey, his dedicated leadership, popularity and unanimous critical acclaim have increased box-office sales and markedly augmented attendance. First Prize winner of the prestigious Malko International Competition in Denmark and prize-winner in Rome's Santa Cecilia Competition, the Cantelli Competition in Milan and Citta di Sorrento International Competition, Maestro Vogel has conducted symphony orchestras, opera, ballet and choirs throughout the world with leading stars including Itzhak Perlman, Gil Shaham, Lynn Harrell, Rudolf Firkushny, Janos Starker, Roberta Peters, Tito Gobbi, Andre-Michel Schub, Mikhail Barishnikov and Rudolf Nureyev.

In recent years he has conducted in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Hungary, Lithuania, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland, Italy, Colombia, Costa Rica, Japan, China, Russia and the UK and his first three CDs of Italian, Swiss and American music were released on the Dynamic and VDE-Gallo labels. Maestro Vogel holds degrees in piano and conducting from the Israel Academy of Music in Tel Aviv, the Juilliard School and Mannes College of Music in New York and a Master's Degree from Ball State University in Indiana. He has studied with Markevitch, Ferrara, Lert, Bamberger, Fournet and Morel and has participated in conducting seminars in Salzburg, Asilomar, Lugano, Hilversum, Siena and Monte Carlo. At the invitation of the American-Israeli Cultural Foundation Vogel returned to his native Israel to conduct the Israel National Opera and subsequently became the conductor of the Haifa Symphony, the Israel Philharmonic Choir and the Kibbutz Artzi Choir with which he toured Europe.

In Europe, Winston Vogel also held the positions of Kapellmeister of the Mainz Opera and Director of the Mainz Singakademie in Germany, and conductor of Het Nederlands Dans Theater in Holland. Maestro Vogel is the founder, President and Artistic Director of Opera USA, a Trustee of the Bergen Museum where he is also Artistic Director of the Mastodon Music Society and its Music Programs.

Israeli-American conductor Yoel Gamzou is Opera USA's director of Emerging Talent Division. He has distinguished himself as a Mahler specialist, transcribing various works into chamber ensemble combinations and preparing a new version of the composer's unfinished Tenth Symphony. Recently he was awarded the Special Encouragement Prize in the International Gustav Mahler Conducting Competition, after which he has embarked upon a prolific conducting career. Maestro Gamzou is currently the General Music Director of Theater Bremen in Germany.

The prominent American-born Swedish Conductor Herbert Blomstedt started his professional international career in 1954, debuting with the Stockholm Philharmonic right after winning the Koussevitzky Prize in Tanglewood summer of 1953. He has been the music director of the Norrköping Symphony Orchestra in Sweden, the Oslo Philharmonic, the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the Dresden Staatskapelle, the Swedish Radio Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Norddeutschen Rundfunk Sinfonieorchester in Hamburg and the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig. Mo Blomstedt is Conductor Laureate of the San Francisco Symphony, The Bamberg Symphony, NHK Tokyo Symphony and Gewandhausorchester. Residing in Switzerland he is a sought after guest conductor in festivals and with orchestras around the globe.

Noted Hungarian conductor, Adam Fischer was raised in a family of musicians, where his father, brother and cousin have all been recognized as eminent conductors. He has been principle conductor in Karlsruhe, General Music Director of Freiburg and Kassel opera houses and the founder of the International Gustav Mahler Festival. Mo. Fischer has repeatedly conducted the Vienna State Opera, San Francisco Opera, Chicago Lyric Opera, the Bavarian State Opera, Paris Opera, La Scala of Milan among many other known opera companies and orchestras. He is also the founder and music director of the Austro-Hungarian Orchestra with which he recorded all Haydn symphonies.

David Apter, born in Manhattan, New York, has had a multifaceted career as piano soloist, chamber musician, four-hand pianist with Deborah Apter, composer, teacher, conductor, violinist and violist. His many piano performance classes are a salient part of his activity as a teacher. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor at William Paterson University and Staten Island University in the early 1970s. Piano accompanying for instrumentalists, singers, dancers, and actors as a staff member of the Juilliard School and Yale University rounded out his activities. Apter studied with some of the most important musicians of the century, including Nadia Boulanger, Rosina Lhevinne, and Paul Badura-Skoda. For a few years he attended classes for piano accompanists and singers given by the legendary accompanist of German Lieder, Eric Werba, at the University for Music in Munich, Germany. Primarily he studied at the Manhattan School of Music (B.M., 1965), Yale University (M.M. 1968, M.M.A. 1969), and at the Juilliard School. After winning a National Defense Education Act Fellowship in musicology, he studied at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 1970–71.

Apter has won many awards and scholarships, including a Fulbright Award in piano solo performance and First Prize in solo piano at the East and West Artists International Auditions in New York City. Critical reviews of his performances, CDs, and other recordings have been consistently enthusiastic across many decades. His international musical career in live concerts, radio and television performances, recordings, and teaching spanned a remarkably wide geography. Aside of performing as a solo pianist in recitals and soloist with orchestra in the USA he extended this activity to Mexico, Central America and South America. His artistic activity was further extended to four-hand piano performing, lecturing, and accompanying. Since 1973 his activities expanded to Europe, where, alongside solo and four-hand piano performances, recordings, and teaching, he immersed himself in chamber music, leading to tours and radio and television performances across Western and Eastern Europe. Later tours to Japan — including a performance for the Imperial Family with the Tokyo Symphony Orchestra — stand among the highlights of his career. For many years, Apter has brought his gifts as a coach to singers, as well as to concert performance. He has followed the activities of Opera USA with enthusiasm since its inception.

Scottie Foreman, Artistic Director of BaroquenRainbow Arts International, was introduced to opera at the tender age of 8 when he was cast as Amahl in an elementary school production of Amahl and the Night Visitors!

He organized his first opera concert when he was 22 years old and has been organizing themed opera concerts ever since. His first concert was at the David Falk Theater in Tampa, FL, as founder of Opera Works of Tampa Bay, and those were followed by others at the landmark Friday Morning Musicale and Federated Music Club also in Tampa. In 2003 he founded Waterbury Opera Works at the encouragement of his mentor and voice teacher Mario Rossi. He went on to become artistic director of Clef Note Productions organizing concerts in New York City, Chicago and Santa Barbara, CA. Most recently he is the founder of BaroquenRainbow Arts International, a nod to his Native American and British ancestry and his love of the Baroque and Romantic era of opera.

In addition to organizing themed opera concerts, he has sung in church choirs, community chorale groups, barbershop ensembles and opera choruses since he was seven years old. Dorothy Gronlund, his first voice teacher, inspired him to follow his passion.

Jouko Saari is a Finnish conductor whose career has ranged across opera, symphony, choral, and chamber music in Europe and North America. A graduate of the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki — with diplomas in conducting, trumpet, music education, and sacred music — he also studied musical science at Helsinki University and was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study conducting and opera at Indiana University in 1969–70. His early training included conducting courses in Weimar, Salzburg, and Hilversum alongside such figures as Arvid Jansons, Heinz Bongartz, Kurt Masur, Bruno Maderna, and Jean Fournet.

Saari has held leading positions at major Scandinavian institutions: Musical Director of the Tampere Symphony Orchestra, Chorus Master of the Finnish National Opera, conductor of the ballet at the Cologne Opera, and Musical Director of the Lahti Symphony Orchestra — where he shared the stage with celebrated Finnish artists including bass Martti Talvela and soprano Karita Mattila. He went on to serve as Conductor and Chorus Master at the Gothenburg Opera, with guest engagements in Sweden continuing through the late 1980s.

His guest conducting has extended across Finland, Sweden, Hungary, Denmark, Germany, Canada, and the United States, and he has conducted recordings with both the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. His long association with the Savonlinna Opera Festival — one of the world's great summer opera events — included work as vocal coach and chorus master. Since 1988, Saari has pursued an active career as a freelance conductor.

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Noy Vogel Blecher is a seasoned business development professional with over a decade of experience spanning B2B, B2C, and B2B2C environments. She brings a rare combination of strategic thinking, organizational planning, and hands-on technical fluency, with a track record of building partnerships and driving growth across international markets.

Her career includes serving as Head of Sales, EMEA at HERE Technologies, where she helped establish the company's mobility marketplace across supply and demand partnerships, leading a team of business development managers responsible for hundreds of relationships. She also held senior product and marketing roles at Rakuten Viber, where she designed and launched in-app promotion solutions at scale.

Noy holds a Bachelor of Architecture from Tel Aviv University, where she was a top nominee for the David Azrieli National Award. She is a skilled communicator who has worked effectively across technical and non-technical teams in multiple geographies and cultures.