Aida

Soprano Melody Moore is enjoying a thriving career on the world’s leading stages, prompting Opera News to label her “a revelation,” and of her recent sold-out appearance at Carnegie Hall to rave, “As I left the auditorium, I could only think: more of Moore, please.” She recently released her first solo album entitled An American Song Album with pianist Bradley Moore on Pentatone Records.

Engagements for the 2022/23 season include Mother Marie in Dialogues of the Carmelites at San Francisco Opera.

In the 2019/20 season, Ms. Moore made her role debut as Amneris in a new production of Aida at the Houston Grand Opera. In concert, she made her debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s Das klagende Lied under the baton of music director Andrés Orozco-Estrada

Planned performances that were canceled during the COVID-reduced season included a role and house debut as the Foreign Princess in Rusalka at Cincinnati Opera, a return to LA Opera as Bess's Mother in Breaking the Waves, the title role in Salome in concert at Bard College, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at Opera Naples, and Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana at Seattle Opera, as well as Vaughan Williams’ Sea Symphony with the Oregon Symphony and a solo recital and masterclass at Lawrence University.

In the 2018/19 season, Ms. Moore returned to Houston Grand Opera to reprise the roles of Senta in the season opening production of The Flying Dutchman led by Music Director Patrick Summers, and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in a new production by Kasper Holten, and returned to LA Opera for a role debut as Gertrude (the Mother) in Hansel and Gretel under the baton of Music Director James Conlon. On the concert stage, she debuted with the Dresdner Philharmonie in the roles of Giorgetta in Il Tabarro and Santuzza in Cavalleria Rusticana, both of which were recorded for commercial release by Pentatone Records. Ms. Moore also sang Senta with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Music Director Edo de Waart, and debuted with the Grant Park Music Festival for Delius’ A Mass of Life at the Grant Park Music Festival, and sang the title role in Salome in Daegu, South Korea. Other recording projects included Minnie in The Girl of the Golden West in Cluj, Romania, and the title role in Madama Butterfly in Lisbon, both recorded for commercial release by Pentatone Records.

In the 2017/18 season, Moore made three major role debuts: Elisabetta in Don Carlo at Washington National Opera; the title role in Salome at Florida Grand Opera; and Tatyana in Eugene Onegin at Hawaii Opera Theater, as well as singing her signature roles of Tosca in a return to Opéra de Montréal and for her house debut with Teatro Municipal de Santiago de Chile, and Senta in The Flying Dutchman in a new production by Tomer Zvulun at Atlanta Opera. Her portrayal of Desdemona in a full recording of Verdi’s Otello was released by Pentatone Records.

Recent career highlights include a house and role debut at Seattle Opera in the title role of Janáček’s Kátya Kabanová; appearances with San Francisco Opera in the title role of Tosca, Susan Rescorla in Heart of a Soldier, Mimì in La Bohème, and the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro; Houston Grand Opera as Julie in Show Boat, Marta in the American premiere of Weinberg’s The Passenger, the title role in Carmen, Dorabella in Così fan tutte; Washington National Opera as the title role of Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, Phillip Glass’ Appomatox, and in Francesca Zambello’s highly acclaimed production of the Wagner’s full Ring cycle; Opéra de Montréal as Cio-Cio-San in Madama Butterfly; Glimmerglass Festival as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth and Senta in The Flying Dutchman; Lincoln Center Festival in The Passenger; English National Opera as Mimi and as Marguerite in Faust; New York City Opera as Rita Clayton in the New York premiere of Stephen Schwartz’s Séance on a Wet Afternoon and as Regine St. Laurent in Rufus Wainwright’s Prima Donna; and Austin Lyric Opera as Senta in The Flying Dutchman. Additional performances include the title roles of Manon Lescaut at New Orleans Opera, Tosca with the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, Pamina in The Magic Flute at Opéra de Bordeaux; and Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni with the Atlanta Opera and Opera Colorado.

On the concert stage, Ms. Moore has appeared with Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for Bruckner’s Te Deum led by Music Director Donald Runnicles; Bard SummerScape Festival as the title role in Turandot; Bavarian Radio Symphony in performances and recording of excerpts of Gordon Getty’s opera Plump Jack, conducted by Ulf Shirmer and with the New Century Chamber Orchestra conducted by Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg. She has joined Rufus Wainwright for gala concerts at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia and at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, and has sung Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the Madison Symphony and at Festival of the Arts Boca. Her solo recital performances have included a sold-out debut recital at Carnegie Hall and the Collaborative Arts Institute of Chicago, as well a program featuring suppressed music of the Holocaust presented under the auspices of the Atlanta Opera.

A graduate of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, Melody Moore is a former Adler Fellow of San Francisco Opera and a participant of the Merola program.

Learn more at MelodyMooreSoprano.com.

With a “heroically shining tone of exceptional clarity and precision” (Opera magazine) and “gorgeously burnished power” (New York Times), American tenor Russell Thomas uses his signature elegance and intensity to create vivid character portrayals on the world’s most important stages.

His engagements for the 2021/22 season include his return to LA Opera as Radames in Aida, Florestan in Fidelio with San Francisco Opera, Cavaradossi in Tosca with Cincinnati Opera, Don Alvaro in La Forza del Destino at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the title role of Otello at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Appearances in the 2022/23 season will include the title role of Ernani with Lyric Opera of Chicago and Calaf in Turandot with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.

He opened the truncated 2019/20 season with his role debut as Don Alvaro in a new production of La forza del destino at Deutsche Oper Berlin, and subsequently made his role and house debuts as Radames in Houston Grand Opera’s new production of Aida. He also returned to Washington National Opera as the title character in Otello. On the concert stage, he joined Gianandrea Noseda at the Vienna Konzerthaus for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.  (Engagements cancelled due to the pandemic included leading roles at the Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera and Canadian Opera Company.)

The 2018/19 season featured Mr. Thomas’s hotly anticipated stage debut in Verdi’s iconic Otello, seen at the Canadian Opera Company after concert performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He sang Manrico in Il Trovatore at the Bavarian State Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago, made his role debut as Roberto Devereux at San Francisco Opera, and brought his celebrated Titus in The Clemency of Titus to LA Opera. On the concert stage, he joined the World Orchestra for Peace in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the BBC Proms, and performed Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. He closed his season by reuniting with conductor Teodor Currentzis and director Peter Sellars for a new Idomeneo at the Salzburger Festspiele.

Lauded by the New York Times for his "expressive, resonant baritone", "insightful phrasing" and "confident, imposing presence", George Gagnidze ranks among the leading singers of his genre.

In 2009, the dramatic baritone made his sensational debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Rigoletto and has since then returned in more than 100 performances, singing roles such as Macbeth, Amonasro (Aida), Scarpia (Tosca), Michele (Il Tabarro), Tonio (Pagliacci), Alfio (Cavalleria Rusticana) and Shaklovity (Khovanshchina).

Regularly invited by the most prestigious international opera companies, engagements of this 2021/22 season include Scarpia in Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera and at the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, Amonasro in Aida at LA Opera, Germont in La Traviata at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Michele in Il Tabarro at the BBC Proms, the title roles of Macbeth at the Palau de les Arts Valencia and of Nabucco at the Staatsoper Hamburg, the Teatro Real of Madrid and the Tbilisi Opera House for a gala performance on the occasion of the inauguration of a Star with his name engraved in front of the theatre.

Already announced for the 2022/23 season are his debut with the Dallas Opera in the title role of Rigoletto, a part he has also performed at the Staatsoper Hamburg; Amonasro in Aida at the Metropolitan Opera, Scarpia in Tosca at the Gran Teatre del Liceu of Barcelona and his role debut as the High Priest of Dagon in Samson et Dalila at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in Berlin.

Among his recent performances are the title part of Rigoletto and Michele in Il Tabarro at the Metropolitan Opera, the title role of Macbeth at the Ópera de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the title part of Nabucco and Barnaba in La Gioconda at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Iago in Otello for his debut at the Washington National Opera, Germont in La Traviata at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Teatro San Carlo of Naples.

Other past highlights include Rigoletto, La Traviata (Germont), Tosca and Aida at the Teatro alla Scala, Nabucco (title role) and Tosca at the Vienna State Opera, Otello (Iago), La Traviata, Tosca, Francesca da Rimini and Aida at Opéra National of Paris, Simon Boccanegra (title role), Tosca and Aida at the Teatro Real Madrid, Andrea Chénier (Carlo Gérard) and Aida at the San Francisco Opera, Rigoletto at the Festival of Aix-en-Provence, Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci at Gran Teatro del Liceu of Barcelona, Rigoletto and Pagliacci at LA Opera, Rigoletto, Andrea Chénier and Tosca at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Luisa Miller (Miller) at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Nabucco and La Traviata at the Arena of Verona, Khovanshchina at the BBC Proms in London and Otello (Iago) at the Greek National Opera of Athens, Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Staatsoper Hamburg, where he has also sung in Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci.

Born in Tbilisi and trained at the State Conservatory of his home town, George Gagnidze debuted as Renato in Un Ballo in Maschera in 1996 at the Paliashvili State Opera. He entered the “Concorso Voci Verdiane” in 2005 as an award-winner of the “Leyla Gencer Voice Competition” and the “Elena Obraztsova Competition”. The jury, chaired by José Carreras and Katia Ricciarelli, awarded him first prize for his outstanding vocal interpretation. After launching his international career from Germany, he was soon engaged by many of the world's important opera houses.

In the course of his career, George Gagnidze, who now masters the genre of dramatic heroic baritone, has worked with many renowned conductors and directors, including Daniel Barenboim, Semyon Bychkov, James Conlon, Plácido Domingo, Gustavo Dudamel, Mikko Franck, James Levine, Jesús López Cobos, Fabio Luisi, Nicola Luisotti, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Gianandrea Noseda, Daniel Oren, Kirill Petrenko and Yuri Temirkanov; Luc Bondy, Henning Brockhaus, Liliana Cavani, Robert Carsen, Giancarlo Del Monaco, Michael Mayer, David McVicar, Peter Stein, Robert Sturua and Francesca Zambello.

In September 2021, the star baritone presented his first solo album on the Orfeo label featuring arias by Leoncavallo, Giordano, Verdi, Wagner and Mozart, which was immediately nominated for the prestigious 2022 International Classical Music Awards in the Vocal Music category. His DVD/Blu-Ray recordings include Tosca from the Metropolitan Opera, Aida from La Scala and Nabucco from the Arena of Verona.

Learn more at GeorgeGagnidze.com.

Morris Robinson is considered one the most interesting and sought-after basses performing today.

Now in the fourth decade of his career, Daniel Sumegi has sung over 100 operatic roles on many of the world’s major stages, including the Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Los Angeles Opera, Washington National Opera, and Seattle Opera, as well as at Opera Australia in his home country. He has also appeared in the opera houses of Bonn, Cologne, Frankfurt and Hamburg, as well as Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Los Angeles and Houston, among many others.

Regarded equally for his dynamic acting as much as his singing, his broad repertoire encompasses all periods of music; from Monteverdi, Mozart and Beethoven to Britten, Maxwell-Davies, Michael Tippett, and Kevin Puts, with a special focus on the Germanic and Slavic composers. Some favorite repertoire includes all of the bass-baritone roles, especially Wotan and Hagen, in Wagner’s Ring cycle.

He has participated in performances of the Ring in New York, Los Angeles, Strasbourg, San Francisco, Cologne, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Seattle, Melbourne, and Adelaide, most notably as Hagen. He has performed Hunding in concert for the Hong Kong, Atlanta, Stuttgart and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras. Additionally, he has bowed as Baron Ochs in Der Rosenkavalier with Welsh National, Scottish and Melbourne Operas, San Francisco and the Metropolitan Opera, Scarpia in Tosca in Washington, Wales, Adelaide, and Knoxville, Jochanaan in Salome in Washington, Hamburg, Tel Aviv, Hong Kong, Leeds, and Sydney, Boris in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk in Nantes and Sydney, and Klingsor in Parsifal in Hamburg, Barcelona, and Adelaide.

The 2021/22 season features Escamillo in Carmen and King Heinrich in Lohengrin, both for Opera Australia in 2022. He also makes company and role debuts as Rocco in Fidelio with Irish National Opera and the Sergeant of Police in The Pirates of Penzance with Atlanta Opera. 2020/21 engagements included Die Walküre (Singapore), Salome (Victorian Opera) and Bluebeard’s Castle (Opera Australia); in October 2021, he was slated to make his debut as Wotan/The Wanderer in Opera Australia’s new production of Der Ring des Nibelungen, before its cancellation due to COVID-19. Other recent engagements include Hunding in Act One of Die Walküre for Atlanta, Stuttgart and Melbourne Symphonies, Pogner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg for Opera Australia, Jochanaan in Salome for New Israeli Opera, the title role in The Flying Dutchman for Malmö Opera in Sweden, and Zuniga in Carmen for Seattle Opera. He also undertook his musical theater debut as Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd for TEG/Lifelike Touring.

Past highlights include the title role in Bloch’s Macbeth in Frankfurt, Luisa Miller in San Francisco and Sydney, Billy Budd and Rigoletto in Los Angeles, The Flying Dutchman, Aïda, Beatrice and Benedict and The Barber of Seville in Seattle, and Kevin Puts's The Manchurian Candidate in Minnesota and Austin.

Mr. Sumegi has collaborated with noted conductors such as James Conlon, Sir Andrew Davis, Charles Dutoit, Dan Ettinger, Asher Fisch, Valery Gergiev, Nicola Luisotti, Sir Charles Mackerras, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Renato Palumbo, Sir Simon Rattle, Carlo Rizzi, Donald Runnicles, Nello Santi, Sir Jeffrey Tate, Edo de Waart, Sebastian Weigle, and Simone Young.

Making his debut in 1988, Sumegi participated in San Francisco Opera’s 1991 Merola Program before taking up additional studies at the Konservatorium der Stadt Wien in 1991-92. A San Francisco Opera Adler Fellow, Sumegi was a winner of the 1994 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, and the 1995 Placido Domingo Operalia, as well as numerous competitions in Australia. He was also a 1995 Sullivan Foundation Grantee.

Mr. Sumegi appears on CD in Beatrice di Tenda and Seattle Opera’s acclaimed Ring cycle, and on DVD in the San Francisco Opera production of Capriccio, Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni, and the historic condensed Ring cycle from Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires.

Learn more at DanielSumegi.com.

Engagements for the 2021/22 season include the leading role of Giorgetta in Il Tabarro with Opera Santa Barbara. In the summer of 2021, she was an Apprentice Artist with Santa Fe Opera, where she performed the role of a Bridesmaid in The Marriage of Figaro. She was recently seen as the First Maiden in Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen with the LA Philharmonic. 

Some previous credits include Camelot with the Lincoln Center Theater, Kathleen Battle’s Underground Railroad recital, the First Lady in The Magic Flute, Lady Macbeth in Bloch's Macbeth, the Female Chorus in The Rape of Lucretia, and the title role of Penelope. She was a featured artist in Lee Mingwei’s exhibit Sonic Blossom with MetLiveArts.

Ms. Fox has been honored with several awards including grand finalist in the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, first place winner of the Joan Taub Ades Vocal competition, semi-finalist in the Elizabeth Connell dramatic soprano competition, and the Lotte Lenya emerging artist award.

An alumna of the Chautauqua Opera and Opera Saratoga young artist programs, Ms. Fox holds Bachelor and Master degrees from the Manhattan School of Music.

Peixin Chen is recognized for his majestically resonant bass voice and for a keen dramatic instinct that he brings to a wide range of roles on the international opera stage. He has worked with an illustrious array of conductors and directors including Harry Bicket, Sebastian Lang-Lessing, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Giancarlo del Monaco, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, David Paul, Michel Plasson, David Pountney, James Robinson, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Patrick Summers, Krzysztof Urbański, and Francesca Zambello.

Engagements for the 2021/22 season include The Magic Flute and Boris Godunov at the Metropolitan Opera, Turandot at Houston Grand Opera, and Aida at Cincinnati Opera.  Symphonic performances bring him to the Kansas City Symphony Orchestra for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

A Metropolitan Opera Council Auditions 2019 National Semifinalist, the tenor is drawing attention for his Italianate sound and compelling stage presence. In addition to his appearances with LA Opera, his engagements for the 2021/22 season include creating the role of Giorgio in New York City Opera's world premiere of Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Garden of the Finzi-Continis.

In the summer of 2021, he performed Tamino in The Magic Flute at the Aspen Music Festival, under the baton of Patrick Summers.

He spent the summers of 2018 and 2019 as an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera, where he covered the role of Lindoro in L’Italiana in Algeri and performed the role of Toke in the world premiere of The Thirteenth Child.

Mr. Ciaramitaro is a former Cornelia T. Bailey Apprentice Artist at Palm Beach Opera, and a former Marion Roose Pullin Studio Artist with Arizona Opera, where he appeared as Theseus in Patrick Morganelli’s Hercules vs. Vampires, Spoletta in Tosca, the Governor and Vanderdendur in Candide, and Count Almaviva in The Barber of Seville. Mr. Ciaramitaro performed the role of Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola as a member of the prestigious Merola Opera Program in 2017, and spent previous seasons as a studio artist with Chautauqua Opera and Wolf Trap Opera, where he performed the roles of Don Basilio in The Marriage of Figaro and the Messenger in Aïda.

While working toward a Masters in Music at Florida State University under the direction of Douglas Fisher and voice teacher David Okerlund, Mr. Ciaramitaro performed the roles of Alfredo in La Traviata, Charles II in Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players, and Don Ramiro in La Cenerentola. Mr. Ciaramitaro earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Rollins College and studied with tenor Richard Owens.

In concert, Mr. Ciaramitaro has performed Orff’s Carmina Burana and Haydn’s The Creation with the Tallahassee Community Chorus, and was the tenor soloist in Handel’s Messiah at the Crystal Cathedral and with the Messiah Choral Society of Winter Park and the Villages Philharmonic.

Since his debut that year with La Traviata, he has conducted 66 different operas and more than 420 performances to date with the company. Highlights of recent seasons include the 2020 company premiere of The Anonymous Lover (L'Amant Anonyme) by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and the 2021 company premiere of Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex.

(Click here to visit James Conlon's Corner, where you can find essays, videos and conversations he has created especially for LA Opera.)

One of today’s most versatile and respected conductors, James Conlon has cultivated a vast symphonic, operatic and choral repertoire. He has conducted virtually every major American and European symphony orchestra since his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1974. He has conducted more than 270 performances at the Metropolitan Opera. Through worldwide touring, an extensive discography and videography, numerous essays and commentaries, frequent television appearances and guest speaking engagements, Mr. Conlon is one of classical music’s most recognized interpreters.

In September 2021, he became Artistic Advisor of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.

He has been Principal Conductor of the RAI National Symphony Orchestra in Torino, Italy (2016–20); Principal Conductor of the Paris Opera (1995–2004); General Music Director of the City of Cologne, Germany (1989–2003), simultaneously leading the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera; and Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra (1983–91).

Mr. Conlon has served as the Music Director of the Ravinia Festival, summer home of the Chicago Symphony (2005–15), and is now Music Director Laureate of the Cincinnati May Festival―the oldest choral festival in the United States―where he was Music Director for 37 years (1979–2016), marking one of the longest tenures of any director of an American classical music institution. As a guest conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he has led more than 270 performances since his 1976 debut. He has also conducted at leading opera houses and festivals including the Vienna State Opera, Salzburg Festival, La Scala, Teatro dell’Opera di Roma, Mariinsky Theatre, Covent Garden, Chicago Lyric Opera, Teatro Comunale di Bologna, and Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino.

As LA Opera's Music Director since 2006, Mr. Conlon has led more performances than any other conductor in the company’s history—to date, over 420 performances of more than 60 different operas by over 20 composers. Highlights of his LA Opera tenure include conducting the company’s first Ring cycle, recently re-aired in a marathon webcast celebrating the performances’ tenth anniversary; initiating the groundbreaking Recovered Voices series, an ongoing commitment to staging masterpieces of 20^th-century European opera that were suppressed by the Third Reich; and spearheading Britten 100/LA, a city-wide celebration honoring the centennial of that composer’s birth. During the period in which Dorothy Chandler Pavilion was closed due to the pandemic, Mr. Conlon conducted LA Opera’s live-streamed, socially distanced production—staged at the Colburn School—of The Anonymous Lover by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a prominent Black composer in 18^th-century France. The performance was presented as an online-only event in fall 2020 and marked the work’s West Coast premiere. The Pavilion reopened in June 2021 with Mr. Conlon conducting the company premiere of Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex, with which LA Opera became the first major American opera company to perform live in its own theater since the coronavirus outbreak. The performance was subsequently released online for at-home viewing. During LA Opera’s 2021/22 season, Mr. Conlon conducts three operas long absent from the company’s repertory: Verdi’s Il Trovatore, which opens the season; Wagner’s Tannhäuser; and Verdi’s Aida. He also conducts John Neumeier’s ballet adaptation of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, performed at LA Opera for the first time.

She has also served as the Artistic Advisor to the San Francisco Opera from 2005-2011 and as the Artistic Director of the Skylight Theater from 1987-1992. In her current roles at the Kennedy Center and the Glimmerglass Festival she is responsible for producing 12 productions annually. She has begun major commissioning programs for new works in both companies that have resulted in productions of many large and small-scaled new works. Both companies have thrived financially and increased their national and international profiles as a result of her artistic vision and leadership.

Her American directing debut took place at the Houston Grand Opera with a production of Fidelio. She debuted in Europe at Teatro la Fenice in Venice with Beatrice di Tenda and has since staged new productions at major theaters and opera houses in Europe and the USA. She has worked at over 50 major opera houses including the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Paris Opera, the Bolshoi, Munich State Opera, Covent Garden and the Australian Opera. Her work has also been seen at many of the world's major festivals. Collaborating with outstanding artists and designers and promoting emerging talent, she takes a special interest in new music theater works, innovative productions, and in producing theater and opera for wider audiences.

Francesca Zambello has been awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for her contribution to French culture, and the Russian Federation's medal for Service to Culture. Other honors for her work include three Olivier Awards from the London Society of Theaters and two Evening Standard Awards for Best Musical and Best Opera. She has also received the award for Best Company Achievement. The French Grand Prix des Critiques was awarded to her twice for her work at the Paris Opera. Other awards include Best Production in Japan, the Palme d'Or in Germany, the Golden Mask in Russia and the Helpmann Award in Australia.

Francesca Zambello's most recent opera projects have included the Ring cycle and Aida for the San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera, and Porgy and Bess and Show Boat for commercial DVD release. Musical and theater projects have included developing Voigt Lessons with Terrance McNally and Debbie Voight; Rebecca for Vienna's Raimund Theater, Stuttgart's Palladium Theater (presented by Stage Entertainment), and in St. Gallen, Switzerland; The Little Prince with Oscar-winning composer Rachel Portman; Napoleon in the West End; The Little Mermaid for Disney on Broadway; a musical adaptation of The Little House on the Prairie for national tour; The Master Butchers at the Guthrie Theater; and Aladdin in Disneyland. Film works have included Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors for BBC Television; a new film for the BBC, Sony and PBS of The Little Prince; and West Side Story for the floating stage in Bregenz.

Ms. Zambello has also served as a guest professor at Yale University. An American who grew up in Europe, she speaks French, Italian, German, and Russian. She attended Moscow University in 1976 and graduated cum laude from Colgate University in 1978. She began her career as an Assistant Director to the late Jean-Pierre Ponnelle. Francesca Zambello lives in New York with her wife, Faith Gay, a founding partner at Selendy and Gay, and step-son, Jackson.

Learn more at FrancescaZambello.com.

At the age of 15, he began painting on posted fashion advertisements and, from there, led one of the largest and most innovative art collectives in the city. His work has exhibited at institutions and galleries in Los Angeles (including the façade of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art's Grand Avenue location for their 2013 Gala celebrating the exhibition Art In The Streets), Miami, London, New York (including the prestigious public exhibition space of the Houston-Bowery Wall), and Hong Kong. RETNA has created exclusive collaborations with brands such as VistaJet, Nike, Louis Vuitton, and Chanel. His production of Aida has been presented at San Francisco Opera, Washington National Opera, Seattle Opera and Minnesota Opera. He lives and works in Los Angeles.

His set designs for plays and musicals include Seascape, The Light in the Piazza, South Pacific, Awake and Sing, Ah, Wilderness (originally designed for Yale Repertory Theatre) and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (which also originated at Yale Rep), all on Broadway, as well as numerous productions Off-Broadway and in regional theaters throughout the United States.

His opera sets have been seen at the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Glimmerglass Festival and New York City Opera, as well as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in London, Welsh National Opera, Scottish Opera, Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, Frankfurt Opera and Opera Australia. He is the winner of two Tony Awards, for The Light in the Piazza in 2005 and for South Pacific in 2008.

She has collaborated with Chen Shi Zheng on The Orphan of Zhao at Beijing Music Festival and Lincoln Center Festival, Snow in June at American Repertory Theatre, Peach Blossom Fan at REDCAT and The Flying Dutchman at the Spoleto Festival. Her New York design credits include Soft Power, Oedipus El Rey, Measure for Pleasure, Kit Marlowe, The Winter’s Tale, Civil Sex and Pericles at the Public Theatre; The Mother with Isabelle Huppert at the Atlantic Theatre Company, Apologia at the Rounabout, The View Upstairs at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre, Nathan the Wise, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Orlando, Venus in Fur, New Jerusalem and Texts for Nothing at Classic Stage Company; Thom Pain, Big Love, Kung Fu, Golden Child and Iphigenia 2.0 at Signature Theater; The Oldest Boy at Lincoln Center Theater; Tales from Red Vienna and The Explorer’s Club at Manhattan Theatre Club, Lives of the Saints and All in the Timing at Primary Stages; The Legend of Georgia Mcbride, The Submission, Coraline the Musical, and The Wooden Breeks at Manhattan Class Company; Macbeth, Coriolanus and Svejk at Theater for a New Audience. She has designed for many regional theater across the country.

She is the costume designer for Opera Australia's 2020 Ring cycle. Additional opera credits include Aida at San Francisco Opera; Cyrano de Bergerac at La Scala, Metropolitan Opera and Royal Opera House (Covent Garden); Les Troyens at Metropolitan Opera; Facing Goya at Spoleto Festival and Singapore Festival; La Hija de Rappaccini with Gotham Chamber Opera, The Rape of Lucretia at Houston Grand Opera; Ainadamar at Tanglewood; The Gambler at Opera Zuid (Holland), Steve Reich's Three Tales international tour; Salome, Fidelio, Die Walkure and Das Rheingold at Washington National Opera; Arshak II at San Francisco Opera; Madame Butterfly at Houston Grand Opera and Grand Theatre de Geneve; The Silver River at Spoleto and Lincoln Center Festival.

Other credits include The Sound of Music at Salzburger Marionetten Theater; Aladdin at Disneyland; and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe at Minneapolis Children’s Theater.

She has also received Obie, Lucille Lortel, Drama Desk, Ovation, and Irene Sharaff Young Master Awards.

Originally from Charlotte, North Carolina, he collaborates frequently with the Glimmerglass Festival, where he has designed more than 20 productions. Other highlights include the lighting designs for The Marriage of Figaro at the Metropolitan Opera; Cyrano de Bergerac at La Scala, The Queen of Spades at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Norma at the Ópera Nacional de Chile and The Pearl Fishers at Houston Grand Opera.

Hailed for his adventurous and bold artistic leadership, and for eliciting technically precise and expressive performances from musicians, Grammy Award-winner Grant Gershon is currently celebrating his 20th anniversary season as Kiki & David Gindler Artistic Director of the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The Los Angeles Times has said the Master Chorale "has become the most exciting chorus in the country under Grant Gershon,” a reflection on both his programming and performances. 
 
During his tenure, Gershon has led more than 200 Master Chorale performances at Walt Disney Concert Hall in programs encompassing a wide range of choral music, from the early pillars of the repertoire to contemporary compositions. He has led world premiere performances of major works by John Adams, Louis Andriessen, Eve Beglarian, Billy Childs, Gabriela Lena Frank, Ricky Ian Gordon, Shawn Kirchner, David Lang, Morten Lauridsen, Steve Reich, Ellen Reid, Christopher Rouse, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and Chinary Ung, among many others.  

Gershon is committed to increasing representation in the choral repertoire, and in 2020 he announced that the Master Chorale will reserve at least 50% of each future season for works by composers from historically excluded groups in classical music. 
 
In July 2019, Gershon and the Master Chorale opened the famed Salzburg Festival with Lagrime di San Pietro, directed by Peter Sellars. The Salzburg performances received standing ovations and rave reviews from such outlets as the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which called Lagrime “painfully beautiful” (Schmerzliche schön). Gershon and the Master Chorale debuted the production in Los Angeles in 2016 and began touring the world with it in 2018. In its review of the premiere of Lagrime, the Los Angeles Times noted that the production “is a major accomplishment for the Master Chorale, which sang and acted brilliantly. It is also a major accomplishment for music history.”

He is the Resident Conductor of LA Opera, and in this capacity conducted the West Coast premiere of Philip Glass’s Satyagraha in November 2018. He made his acclaimed debut with the company with La Traviata in 2009 and has subsequently conducted productions including Il Postino, Madama Butterfly, Carmen, Florencia en el Amazonas, Wonderful Town, The Tales of Hoffmann and The Pearl Fishers. In 2017, he made his San Francisco Opera debut conducting the world premiere of John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West directed by Peter Sellars, who also wrote the libretto, and made his Dutch National Opera debut with the same opera in March 2019. Gershon and Adams have an enduring friendship and professional relationship which began 27 years ago in Los Angeles when Gershon played keyboards in the pit for Nixon in China at LA Opera. Since then, Gershon has led the world premiere performances of Adams’ theater piece I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, premiered his two-piano piece Hallelujah Junction (with Gloria Cheng), and conducted performances of Harmonium, The Gospel According to the Other Mary, El Niño, The Chairman Dances, and choruses from The Death of Klinghoffer. 

In New York, Gershon has appeared at Carnegie Hall and at the historic Trinity Wall Street, and he has performed on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center and the Making Music series at Zankel Hall. Other major appearances include performances at the Ravinia, Aspen, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Salzburg, and Vienna festivals, the South American premiere of LA Opera’s production of Il Postino in Chile, and performances with the Baltimore Symphony and the Coro e Orchestra del Teatro Regio di Torino in Turin, Italy. He has worked closely with numerous conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, James Conlon, Gustavo Dudamel, Lorin Maazel, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle, and his mentor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. 
 
His discography includes the 2022 Grammy Award-winning recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 8 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as Grammy–nominated recordings of Sweeney Todd (New York Philharmonic Special Editions) and Ligeti’s Grand Macabre (Sony Classical); six commercial CDs with the Master Chorale, including Glass-Salonen (RCM), You Are (Variations) (Nonesuch), Daniel Variations (Nonesuch), A Good Understanding (Decca), Miserere (Decca), and the national anthems (Cantaloupe Music); and two live-performance albums, the Master Chorale’s 50th Season Celebration recording and Festival of Carols. He has also led the Master Chorale in performances for several major motion pictures soundtracks, including, at the request of John Williams, Star Wars: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. Gershon was named Outstanding Alumnus of the Thornton School of Music in 2002 and received the USC Alumni Merit Award in 2017.  

Jessica Lang is an American director and choreographer based in New York City. Since 1999, Lang has created more than 100 original works on companies worldwide including American Ballet Theatre, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Birmingham Royal Ballet, the National Ballet of Japan, The Joffrey Ballet, and her eponymous company Jessica Lang Dance, among many others. 

For more than two decades, Lang has worked extensively for American Ballet Theatre. Her original creations on the main company include Her Notes, Garden Blue, and ZigZag with the legendary Tony Bennett, as well as Let Me Sing Forevermore which was performed on the ABT Across America nationwide tour and featured regularly on Celebrity Cruise entertainment programs. Lang has created seven ballets on ABT Studio Company including Children’s Songs Dance in collaboration with music icon Chick Corea. Additionally for ABT, Lang was part of the founding faculty of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, a teaching artist for the summer intensives and the Make-a-Ballet program, and served as a mentor and panelist for the Incubator program. 

For opera, Lang directed and choreographed Pergolesi's Stabat Mater at the 2013 Glimmerglass Opera Festival that was presented at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival in 2017 performed by Jessica Lang Dance. In 2016, she choreographed San Francisco Opera's production of Aida, directed by Francesca Zambello that has been presented at Washington National Opera and Seattle Opera and will be seen in 2022 at LA Opera. Additional commissions include new works for the Kennedy Center with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Harris Theater and the Chicago Architecture Biennial in collaboration with architect Steven Holl, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum for its Works and Process series. For fashion, Lang was the movement advisor for Carolina Herrera's pre-fall 2022 collection.

Lang was Artistic Director of Jessica Lang Dance from 2011-2019. Founded in 2011, the company toured and performed in over 85 cities presented by major venues including Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles Music Center, The Kennedy Center, The Harris Theater, New York City Center, Northrop Auditorium, Winspear Opera House, Tel Aviv Opera House, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, BAM Fisher and Helikon Opera, among many others.

She is the recipient of a 2018 Martha Hill Mid-Career Award, the 2017 Arison Award and a 2014 Bessie Award. She has been a fellow of New York City Center and NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts, and in 2019 named a Caroline Hearst Choreographer-in-Residence at Princeton University. Lang’s work has also been performed by numerous educational institutions including The Juilliard School, SUNY Purchase, NYU Tisch School of the Arts and University of Arizona, among many others.

Jessica Lang is originally from Bucks County, PA and a graduate of The Juilliard School under the direction of Benjamin Harkarvy. Lang is a former member of Twyla Tharp's company, THARP! where she toured and performed all over the world.

Learn more at JessicaLangChoreographer.com.