2025 Opera Conservatory

American Apollo

Composer: Damien Geter 
Librettist: Lila Palmer 

Performance Dates: July 9 in Flectcher Music Hall 
Stage Director: John Matsumoto Giampietro 

American Apollo is a story forged at the crossroad of celebrity; class; race and power in America. Teasing at the impossibly closed page of the personal relationship between two intensely private people with good reasons to be silent: John Singer Sargent, the closeted celebrity image crafter, and public artist and the African – American Artist’s Model; Soldier & Muse Thomas McKeller. This opera tells the tale of individual courage and breathtaking vulnerability that peels the paint off venerable historical figures to reveal the beating heart & simmering desire beneath Sargent’s only uncommissioned monumental male nude. Is love blind, or does it in fact have the keenest eyes of all?

Le nozze di Figaro

Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 
Librettist: Lorenzo Da Ponte 

Performance Date: July 17 & 19 at Fletcher Music Hall    
Stage Director: Nathan Troup 

It’s a wedding, and you’re invited! 

A contemporary production of Le Nozze di Figaro reimagines the classic opera in a modern context, blending traditional elements with innovative staging and design and modern dress Set against a backdrop of a sleek, minimalist environment, this production will highlight themes of class struggle and gender dynamics through a contemporary lens. From Figaro and famously sharp banter to the Count’s unsettling attempts to exert power over Susanna, this production will crackle with wit while lifting up ever-relevant themes of inequality, consent and agency in relationships, and gender dynamics.  And while no marriage is perfect…that of Mozart’s music and Da Ponte’s text comes exceedingly close in ways brilliant, bawdy, and bold (just as Beaumarchais intended back in 1778). This production invigorates Mozart’s masterpiece, inviting audiences to reflect on its themes within the context of our modern sensibilities. Please join us for this musically sublime tragicomedy exploring life, liberty, and the pursuit of upending the patriarchy. 

La Vida Breve

Music by: Manuel de Falla 
Librettist: Carlos Fernández Shaw

Performance Date: July 28 at The Amphitheater
Stage Director: Emma Griffin 
Conductor: Timothy Muffitt 

La Vida Breve, with music by Manuel de Falla and a libretto by Carlos Fernández Shaw, is considered one of the greatest operas written in Spanish. Written in 1905, it’s a kind of “tragic zarzuela”, a hothouse verismo opera that mixes Andalusian folk songs into a score shimmering with French Impressionism. This vivid and engrossing opera centers on Salud, the working-class heroine, a victim of passion and betrayal. Salud loves Paco, a sophisticated cad, who offers her pledges of love but marries another, wealthier, girl, leaving Salud desolate with heartbreak. Only one hour long, La Vida Breve is sonically thrilling, with richly sung emotion and vivacious rhythms — a gripping story of the human condition.