The Brightness of Light

Renée Fleming is one of the most highly-acclaimed singers of our time, performing on the stages of the world’s greatest opera houses and concert halls.

In 2013, President Obama awarded her the National Medal of Arts. Winner of four Grammy Awards, she has sung for momentous occasions from the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the Diamond Jubilee Concert for Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. She earned a Tony Award nomination for her performance in the 2018 Broadway production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel. Her new album Renée Fleming: Broadway was released in September 2018 by Decca. She is heard on the soundtracks of the 2018 Best Picture Oscar winner The Shape of Water and of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and she provided Julianne Moore’s singing voice for the film Bel Canto, released in the fall of 2018. As Artistic Advisor to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Renée Fleming spearheads a collaboration with the National Institutes of Health focused on music, health, and neuroscience. Among her awards are Germany’s Cross of the Order of Merit, France’s Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, and Honorary Membership in the Royal Academy of Music.

In 2022, she will create the role of Clarissa in the world premiere of The Hours by Kevin Puts.

Learn more at ReneeFleming.com.

Other notable LA Opera roles include Papageno in The Magic Flute (1993, 2002); Walt Whitman in Matthew Aucoin's Crossing (2018); and as the soloist in David Lang's one-man opera the loser (2019). He will return in 2021 in The Brightness of Light by Kevin Puts.

Born and raised in Southern California, he earned degrees from California State University Fullerton, and the University of Southern California. From 1987 to 1989 he was a member of the Frankfurt Opera ensemble, and from 1989 to 1994 he was a member of the Zurich Opera ensemble.

The two-time Grammy nominee, singer and actor has performed in all the world's music capitals. He is acclaimed world-wide in opera, musicals, recitals and cabaret. He has created 12 leading roles in opera world premieres, most recently in the Brooklyn Academy of Music solo opera by David Lang, the loser; and at the Houston Grand Opera in Jake Heggie's It's a Wonderful Life. Other recent appearances include: Adelaide Festival (Brett Dean's Hamlet), Glyndebourne Festival (Hamlet world premiere), Metropolitan Opera (Thomas Adès The Exterminating Angel), Brooklyn Academy of Music (Aucoin's Crossing), Los Angeles Master Chorale (Beethoven Missa Solemnis), Edinburgh Festival (Così fan tutte), American Repertory Theater Boston (Matthew Aucoin's Crossing world premiere), Zurich Opera (Rote Laterne world premiere), NYC Mostly Mozart Festival (Cosi fan tutte), San Francisco Symphony (The Tempest), Alabama Symphony (Beethoven 9th Symphony), Vienna Volksoper (Kismet), New York City Opera (Anna Nicole), Aix-en-Provence Festival (Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte), Quebec City Festival (The Tempest), Los Angeles Philharmonic (Cosi fan tutte), London Royal Opera Covent Garden (Anna Nicole), Metropolitan Opera (The Merry Widow) and the Milwaukee Symphony (Cosi fan tutte).

Kevin Puts is the winner of numerous prestigious awards, including the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for his debut opera Silent Night. His works have been commissioned, performed, and recorded by leading ensembles, and soloists throughout the world, including Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Jeffrey Kahane, Dame Evelyn Glennie, the New York Philharmonic, the Tonhalle Orchester (Zurich), the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Miro Quartet, and the symphony orchestras of Baltimore, Cincinnati, Detroit, Atlanta, Colorado, Houston, Fort Worth, St. Louis, and Minnesota.

His newest orchestral work, The City, was co-commissioned by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in honor of its 100th anniversary and by Carnegie Hall in honor of its 125th anniversary. His new vocal work Letters From Georgia, written for soprano Renée Fleming and orchestra and based on the personal letters of Georgia O’Keeffe, had its world premiere in New York in the fall of 2016, and his first chamber opera, an adaptation of Peter Ackroyd’s gothic novel The Trial of Elizabeth Cree, commissioned by Opera Philadelphia, had its world premiere in September 2017, followed by performances with Chicago Opera Theater in February 2018.

His next opera, The Hours, based on Michael Cunningham's novel, will premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 2022, starring Renée Fleming as Clarissa, Kelli O’Hara as Laura and Joyce DiDonato as Virginia Woolf. 

Kevin is currently a member of the composition department at the Peabody Institute and the Director of the Minnesota Orchestra Composer’s Institute.

Learn more at KevinPuts.com.

Sought after for her insightful interpretations and dynamic presence, New Zealand-born Gemma New is a leader among the new generation of conductors. She is currently in her sixth season as the Music Director of the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra and her second season as Principal Guest Conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Hailed as “a rising star in the musical firmament” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), New was awarded Solti Foundation Career Assistance Awards in 2017, 2019 and 2020. 

Despite COVID-19, New anticipates a 2020/21 season that will include performances with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, and leading the BBC Symphony Orchestra at London’s Barbican Centre in May 2021. On August 26, 2020, New led a performance with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, which was streamed live globally.

New’s 2019/20 season featured her inaugural concerts as Principal Guest Conductor in Dallas and debuts with the National Symphony Orchestra D.C., Milwaukee Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, Kristiansand Symfoniorkester, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Ulster Orchestra, and New Zealand Symphony. New’s debut with the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, conducting a production of Susannah with Susanna Phillips in the title role was replaced by an online performance of Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow,” which raised over $350,000 for the St. Louis Artist Relief Fund.

Learn more at GemmaNew.com.

Wendall K. Harrington’s career has embraced diverse disciplines including theater, publishing, multi-image/video design and production. As a designer of scenic projections for the stage, her work has been seen on Broadway in All the Way, Annie, Driving Miss Daisy, Grey Gardens, The Good Body, Drowning Crow, They're Playing Our Song, The Elephant Man, My One and Only, The Heidi Chronicles, Four Baboons Adoring the Sun, The Will Rogers Follies, Having Our Say, Company, Racing Demon, Steel Pier, Ragtime, Freak, The Capeman, Amy's View, The Civil War, Putting It Together and Vincent in Brixton. In 1993, Ms. Harrington designed the projections for the award-winning The Who's Tommy on Broadway, which toured the U.S. in 1994, and has had productions in Toronto, London and Frankfurt, Germany.

Additional theatrical projection credits include Old Hats and Angels in America O at the Signature Theatre, Amy's View at the National in London; The Civil War at the Alley and Broadway; Putting It Together at the Mark Taper Forum and Broadway; Golden Child at the Public Theater; Hapgood at Lincoln Center; Twelve Dreams at the Public Theatre, A Christmas Carol at the Paramount; Merrily We Roll Along (four times!) and the ill-fated Whistle Down the Wind.

She made her LA Opera debut in 2010 with projections for The Stigmatized, returning in 2014 as projection and scenic designer for Lucia di Lammermoor. Projection designs for opera elsewhere include Werther at the Metropolitan Opera, Julie Taymor’s staging of The Magic Flute in Florence, Italy, The Ghosts of Versailles, Rusalka, Nixon in China, Die tote Stadt, The Girl of the Golden West, Brundibar, A View from the Bridge, The Grapes of Wrath, The Juniper Tree, Morning Star, The Photographer, Transatlantic and Orpheo ed Euridice as well as sets and projections for Ricky Ian Gordon’s Rappahannock County.

Ballet designs include Anna Karenina, Opera, Pictures at an Exhibition, Cinderella and The Firebird for Alexei Ratmansky, Ballet Mécanique for Doug Varone and Dancers, Othello for ABT, The Nutcracker for San Francisco Ballet and a new Don Quixote for the Joffrey.

Concert work includes Songs of Innocence and Experience, William Bolcom’s setting of the Blake poems, The Talking Heads' “Stop Making Sense” tour, as well as tours for Simon & Garfunkel, Chris Rock and John Fogerty.

For her work in the theater, Ms. Harrington is the recipient of the Drama Desk Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the American Theatre Wing Award, the TCI Award for Technical Achievement, the Obie Award for Sustained Excellence of Projections and the Michael Merrit Award for Collaboration, Ruth Morely Design Award, USITT education award and Players Club Theatre person of the year

She directed and designed the world premiere of Doug Cuomo’s opera Arjuna’s Dilemma, as well as Snapshots, an evening of new string quartets and images.

She has written an adaptation of The Diary of Petr Ginz, to serve as an introduction to Brundibar, which has been presented by Opera Theatre of St Louis and the Palm Beach Opera, and is currently adapting Virginia Woolf’s Orlando for ballet.

Ms. Harrington’s work in the multi-image/video field includes the 1991 Words on Fire. This half-hour program, which she produced for PBS affiliate KTCA and Alive From Off Center, features six artists exploring their ideas of fire. Included in the eclectic mix are the cozy fireside warmth of the Tennessee poet Jo Carson, the urbane wit of Chris Durang, an excerpt from Fred Curchack’s incendiary one-man rendition of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a feverish monologue by Todd Alcott, and steamy 16th-century erotic poetry seen through the filter of music and performance by Rinde Eckert.

During the mid-eighties, as design director of Esquire magazine, Ms. Harrington was responsible for the re-design and re-launch of the “Men’s Magazine of the 90’s.” Two years later, as editor-at-large for Esquire, she conceived and edited Randy Shilts’s “My Life on the AIDS Tour,” which was nominated for a National Magazine Award and published in Best American Essays of 1990.

In 1979 she founded Luminous Productions, Inc. where for six years she produced and directed multi-image and video projects for numerous corporate clients. “The Multi-Image Murders” and “Fifty Who Made the Difference” won several awards, including Gold Awards from IFPA, The Chicago Film Festival and the U.S. Industrial Film Festival.

Ms Harrington lectures widely on the art of Projection design and is the head of the MFA program in Projection Design at the Yale School of Drama.

Learn more at WendallHarrington.com.