Opera Cues Spring 2023 - Salome

TO TEXAS YOUTH AND EDUCATION SINCE 1932

In 2023 alone, the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ has provided more than $2 million to 40 organizations and programs, including:

AFA • Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation • Big Brothers Big Sisters Lone Star • Glassell School of Art • Houston Ballet • Houston Police Foundation • Houston Symphony • Houston Zoo • and many others!

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA

The Show supports Houston Grand Opera’s Community and Learning initiative, including the Student Performance Series, Opera To Go!, and Storybook Opera. The program serves nearly 70,000 students every season and has been a Show grant recipient for the past 20 years.

SMALL STEPS

Small Steps Nurturing Center is a comprehensive, high-quality early childhood education program that prepares children living in poverty for success in elementary school and life. Small Steps operates two preschools in Houston at no financial cost to the families they serve. Over the next year, Small Steps expects to serve approximately 180 children.

SCHREINER UNIVERSITY

Schreiner University – Western Art Academy Scholarship Program awards scholarships to 48 students who participate in the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo School Art program each year. These scholarships allow high school students to study Western art and learn traditional studio techniques from practicing professional artists.

Visit rodeohouston.com to learn more.

A MESSAGE FROM THE GENERAL DIRECTOR AND CEO

Welcome to the Wortham Theater! We are thrilled you have joined us for the spectacular spring finale of HGO’s season-long celebration of powerful women in opera: Puccini’s Tosca and Strauss’s Salome

This presentation of Tosca is history in the making, as the opera brings the once-in-alifetime chance to see soprano Tamara Wilson—whose high-flying career began at our own Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio—make her role debut as Floria Tosca, the passionate singer willing to die for freedom. What a special thing to be in the theater as Wilson takes her place among the great interpreters of the iconic role: names like Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi, and Montserrat Caballé.

The opera is also headlined by star tenor Jonathan Tetelman in his HGO debut as Tosca’s lover Cavaradossi and Grammy-nominated baritone Rod Gilfry as the villain Scarpia. Benjamin Manis returns to HGO to take the podium for Tony-winning director John Caird’s production.

Audiences at Salome will witness not only formidable soprano Laura Wilde’s company debut—fresh from her acclaimed turn as Ellen Orford in the Met’s Peter Grimes—but also her debut in the famously demanding role of the ruthless titular princess. Like Wilson, Wilde will be joining an elite roster of singers from history, who at HGO alone comprise quite the extraordinary group: Brenda Lewis, Felicia Weathers, Grace Melzia Bumbry, Josephine Barstow, and Hildegard Behrens!

The stunning soprano Karita Mattila performs as Salome’s stepmother Herodias in her first return to HGO since her unforgettable 2015 portrayal of Sieglinde in Die Walküre, with two superb Butler Studio alumni completing the powerhouse cast: bass-baritone Ryan McKinny as Jokanaan, the prophet who spurns Salome’s advances, and tenor Chad Shelton as her stepfather, King Herod.

Finally, both director Francisco Negrin and conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson are making their own anticipated company debuts, with Wilson, founder and director of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, traveling to Houston after leading the ensemble on tour through the United States and Europe.

Salome is the very first opera HGO ever produced, opening on January 19, 1956. The choice of Strauss’s masterpiece is noteworthy, as its shocking story, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, was and is best known for causing outrage. HGO’s history with the piece says something important about the ethos of this company, the sophistication of its audience, and the Texan spirit of individuality and irreverence that—to this day—are so central to our own story. Thank you for being a part of it.

Khori Dastoor General Director and CEO Margaret Alkek Williams Chair

Keeping ELITE PERFORMERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT

At Houston Methodist, we’re proud partners in helping artists achieve peak performance, week in and week out. We treat artists and their unique needs, while bringing the same level of specialized care to every patient we serve.

713.790.3333

houstonmethodist.org

Photo Credit: Lynn Lane Photography

Photo credit: Lynn Lane

HGO BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2022-23

OFFICERS

Claire Liu, Chair of the Board

Allyn Risley, Senior Chair of the Board

Janet Langford Carrig, Chair Emeritus of the Board; Houston Grand Opera Endowment, Inc. Chair Emeritus

Lynn Wyatt, Vice Chair of the Board

MEMBERS AT LARGE

Richard E. Agee, Finance Committee Vice Chair

Thomas R. Ajamie

Robin Angly *, Community and Learning Committee Vice Chair

John S. Arnoldy *

Christopher V. Bacon, Secretary; General Counsel

Michelle Beale, Governance Committee Chair

Astley Blair, Audit Committee Chair

Albert Chao

Louise G. Chapman

Mathilda Cochran, Community and Learning Committee Chair

Albert O. Cornelison Jr. *

James W. Crownover

Khori Dastoor

Joshua Davidson

David B. Duthu *

Warren A. Ellsworth IV, M.D., Studio Committee Vice Chair

Benjamin Fink, Finance Committee Chair

Joe Geagea

Michaela Greenan, Audit Committee Vice Chair

Dr. Ellen R. Gritz

Selda Gunsel

Richard Husseini

José M. Ivo, Philanthropy Committee

Vice Chair

Myrtle Jones

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA ASSOCIATION CHAIRS

1955–58

Elva Lobit

1958–60

Stanley W. Shipnes

1960–62

William W. Bland

1962–64

Thomas D. Anderson

1964–66

Marshall F. Wells

1966–68

John H. Heinzerling

1968–70

Lloyd P. Fadrique

1970–71

Ben F. Love

1971–73

Joe H. Foy

1973–74

Gray C. Wakefield

1974–75

Charles T. Bauer

1975–77

Maurice J. Aresty

1977–79

Searcy Bracewell

1979–81

Robert Cizik

1981–83

Terrylin G. Neale

1983–84

Barry Munitz

1984–85

Jenard M. Gross

1985–87

Dr. Thomas D. Barrow

1987–89

John M. Seidl

1989–91

James L. Ketelsen

Marianne Kah, Houston Grand Opera Endowment, Inc. Vice Chair

Yolanda Knull, Houston Grand Opera Endowment, Inc. Chair

David LePori, Governance Committee Vice Chair

Gabriel Loperena, Philanthropy Committee Chair

Richard A. Lydecker Jr.

Beth Madison *

Paul Marsden

Sid Moorhead

Sara Morgan

Terrylin G. Neale, Houston Grand Opera Endowment, Inc. Secretary; Treasurer

Ward Pennebaker, Audiences Committee Chair

Cynthia Petrello

Gloria M. Portela

Allyson Pritchett

Matthew L. Ringel, Audiences Committee

Vice Chair

Kelly Brunetti Rose

Glen A. Rosenbaum

Jack A. Roth, M.D., Studio Committee Chair

Harlan C. Stai

John G. Turner *

Veer Vasishta

Alfredo Vilas

Margaret Alkek Williams

* Senior Director

1991–93

Constantine S. Nicandros

1993–95

J. Landis Martin

1995–97

Robert C. McNair

1997–99

Dennis R. Carlyle, M.D.

Susan H. Carlyle, M.D.

1999–2001

Archie W. Dunham

2001–03

Harry C. Pinson

2003–04

James T. Hackett

2004–07

John S. Arnoldy

2007–09

Robert L. Cavnar

2009

Gloria M. Portela

2009–11

Glen A. Rosenbaum

2011–13

Beth Madison

2013–16

John Mendelsohn, M.D.

2016–18

James W. Crownover

2018–20

Janet Langford Carrig

2020–22

Allyn Risley

2022–present

Claire Liu

IMPRESARIOS CIRCLE

IMPRESARIOS CIRCLE

$100,000 OR MORE

Judy and Richard Agee

Robin Angly and Miles Smith

The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Sarah and Ernest Butler

Anne and Albert Chao

Louise G. Chapman

The Robert and Jane  Cizik Foundation

Mathilda Cochran

ConocoPhillips

Mr. and Mrs. James W.  Crownover

The Cullen Foundation

The Cullen Trust for  the Performing Arts

City of Houston  through Houston

Arts Alliance

Connie Dyer

Frost Bank

Drs. Liz Grimm and Jack Roth

Nancy Haywood

William Randolph

Hearst Foundation

H-E-B

Houston Grand Opera  Endowment, Inc.

Houston Methodist

Humphreys Foundation

Elizabeth and Richard Husseini

To learn more about HGO’s Impresarios Circle members, please see page 71.

Donna Kaplan and  Richard A. Lydecker

Claire Liu and Joe Greenberg

Beth Madison

Mr. Paul Marsden and  Mr. Jay Rockwell

The Robert and Janice

McNair Foundation

Mr. and Mrs. D. Bradley

McWilliams

M.D. Anderson Foundation

Sara and Bill Morgan

National Endowment  for the Arts

Novum Energy

Allyson Pritchett

Jill and Allyn Risley

Glen A. Rosenbaum

Susan D. Sarofim

Shell USA, Inc.

Dian and Harlan Stai

Texas Commission on the Arts

Mr. John G. Turner and  Mr. Jerry G. Fischer

Veer Vasishta

Vinson & Elkins LLP

Margaret Alkek Williams

The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

Lynn Wyatt

Nina and Michael Zilkha

2 Anonymous

FOUNDERS COUNCIL FOR ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE

Houston Grand Opera is deeply appreciative of its Founders Council donors. Their extraordinary support over a three-year period helps secure the future while ensuring the highest standard of artistic excellence. For information, please contact Greg Robertson, chief philanthropy officer, at 713-546-0274 or GRobertson@HGO.org.

Ajamie LLP

Robin Angly and Miles Smith

Baker Botts L.L.P.

Dr. Saúl and Ursula Balagura

Michelle Beale and  Dick Anderson

Anne and Albert Chao

Jane Cizik

ConocoPhillips

Mr. and Mrs. James W.

Crownover

Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Davidson

Connie Dyer

Drs. Rachel and  Warren A. Ellsworth IV

Frost Bank

Marianne and Joe Geagea

Drs. Liz Grimm and Jack Roth

Dr. Ellen R. Gritz and  Mr. Milton D. Rosenau Jr.

Houston Methodist

Myrtle Jones

Marianne Kah

Donna Kaplan and  Richard A. Lydecker

Carolyn J. Levy

Claire Liu and  Joe Greenberg

Gabriel Loperena

M. David Lowe and  Nana Booker

Booker · Lowe Gallery

Beth Madison

Mr. Paul Marsden and  Mr. Jay Rockwell

John P. McGovern Foundation

The Robert and Janice McNair  Foundation

Mellon Foundation

Dr. and Mrs. Miguel  Miro-Quesada

Kathleen Moore and  Steven Homer

Novum Energy

Allyson Pritchett

Matthew L. Ringel

Jill and Allyn Risley

Kelly and David Rose

Glen A. Rosenbaum

John Serpe and Tracy Maddox

Dian and Harlan Stai

Sheila Swartzman

Mr. and Mrs. Donald G.  Sweeney

Mr. John G. Turner and  Mr. Jerry G. Fischer

Vinson & Elkins LLP

Veer Vasishta

Helen Wils and  Leonard Goldstein

The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

R. Alan and Frank York

Anonymous

Sing! Move! Play! Camp

Octavia Fields Library, Evelyn Meador Library, and Galena Park Public Library

Grades Pre-K-2. To register, visit the library websites. For more information, visit HGO.org/ Community-and-Learning.

PREMIER UNDERWRITERS

GRAND UNDERWRITER—

$50,000 OR MORE

Thomas R. Ajamie

Ken and Donna Barrow

Mrs. Mercedes Bass

Michelle Beale and  Dick Anderson

Janet and John Carrig

Drs. Rachel and Warren A.

Ellsworth IV

Marianne and Joe Geagea

Dr. Ellen R. Gritz and  Mr. Milton D. Rosenau Jr.

Stephanie Larsen

Alfred W. Lasher III

Carolyn J. Levy

Laura and Brad McWilliams

Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Nickson

Isabel and Ignacio Torras

Mr. and Mrs. Jesse B. Tutor

2 Anonymous

UNDERWRITER—

$25,000 OR MORE

Mr. William J. Altenloh and  Dr. Susan Saurage-Altenloh

THE LEADERSHIP COUNCIL

Dr. Saúl and Ursula Balagura

Dr. Gudrun H. Becker

Meg Boulware and  Hartley Hampton

Melinda and Bill Brunger

Ms. Kiana K. Caleb and  Mr. Troy L. Sullivan

Shelly Cyprus

Mr. and Mrs. Joshua Davidson

Dr. Elaine DeCanio

Lynn Des Prez

Joanne and David Dorenfeld

Rebecca and Brian Duncan

C.C. and Duke Ensell

Jennifer and Benjamin Fink

Michelle Klinger and  Ruain Flanagan

Amanda and Morris Gelb

Lynn Gissel

Leonard A. Goldstein and  Helen B. Wils

Michaela and Nicholas Greenan

Janet Gurwitch and Ron Franklin

Dr. Linda L. Hart

Brenda Harvey-Traylor

Matt Healey

Gary Hollingsworth and  Ken Hyde

Marianne Kah

Kirk Kveton and Daniel Irion

Mr. and Mrs. Richard J.  Langenstein

Stephanie Larsen

Lori and David LePori

Sharon Ley Lietzow and  Robert Lietzow

M. David Lowe and Nana Booker

Booker · Lowe Gallery

Mrs. Marilyn Lummis

Mrs. Rosemary Malbin

Dr. Laura Marsh

Muffy and Mike McLanahan

Will L. McLendon

Amy and Mark Melton

Dr. and Mrs. Miguel  Miro-Quesada

Kathleen Moore and  Steven Homer

Sid Moorhead

Diane K. Morales

Terrylin G. Neale

Cynthia and Anthony Petrello

Ms. Elizabeth Phillips

Gloria M. Portela

Mr. Todd Reppert

Matthew L. Ringel

Kelly and David Rose

James and Nathanael

Mr. and Mrs. David Rowan

John Serpe and Tracy Maddox

Dr. Ioannis Skaribas and  Dr. Evelina Skaribas

Jeff Stocks and Juan Lopez

Dr. Laura E. Sulak and  Dr. Richard W. Brown

Sheila Swartzman

Rhonda and Donald Sweeney

Dr. and Mrs. Demetrio

Alejandra and Héctor Torres

Mr. Scott B. Ulrich and  Mr. Ernest A. Trevino

John C. Tweed

Laura and Georgios Varsamis

Marietta Voglis

Alan and Frank York

Rini and Edward Ziegler

2 Anonymous

The Leadership Council is a program designed to provide fiscal stability to Houston Grand Opera’s Annual Fund through three-year commitments, with a minimum of $10,000 pledged annually. We gratefully acknowledge these members.

Mr. and Mrs. Frank N. Barnes

Dr. Michael and Susan Bloome

Mr. and Mrs. Lester P. Burgess

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Burleson

Dr. Peter Chang and Hon.

Theresa Chang

Mr. Anthony Chapman

Ms. Anna M. Dean

Elisabeth DeWitts

Anna and Brad Eastman

Christine and Gerard Gaynor

Norine and David Gill

Brenda Harvey-Traylor

Ann and Stephen Kaufman

Ann Koster

Elizabeth and Bill Kroger

Jan and Nathan Meehan

Terrylin G. Neale

Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Pancherz

Dr. Angela Rechichi-Apollo

Ed and Janet Rinehart

Michelle and Chuck Ritter

Adel and Jason Sander

Mrs. Helen P. Shaffer

Mr. and Mrs. John Untereker

Georgios and Laura Varsamis

Mary Lee and Jim Wallace

THE PRODUCTION FUNDERS

Houston Grand Opera is internationally acclaimed for its onstage excellence. Ensuring the exceptional quality of our productions and the creativity of our artistic forces — singers, conductors, directors, designers — is our highest priority. The art we make onstage is the foundation for everything we do. For information about joining The Production Funders, please contact Greg Robertson, chief philanthropy officer, at 713-546-0274 or GRobertson@HGO.org.

Robin Angly and Miles Smith

Baker Botts L.L.P.

Bank of America

Dr. Dennis Berthold and  Dr. Pamela Matthews

Boulware & Valoir

The Brown Foundation, Inc.

Ms. Kiana K. Caleb and  Mr. Troy L. Sullivan

Louise Chapman

The Robert and Jane  Cizik Foundation

ConocoPhillips

The Cullen Trust for  the Performing Arts

Connie Dyer

Frost Bank

Drs. Liz Grimm and Jack Roth

Janet Gurwitch and Ron Franklin

Marianne and Joe Geagea

H-E-B

Matt Healey

Houston Grand Opera  Endowment, Inc.

Houston Methodist

Humphreys Foundation

Elizabeth and Richard Husseini

Marianne Kah

Donna Kaplan and

The Robert and Janice  McNair Foundation

Sara and Bill Morgan

Terrylin G. Neale

Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Nickson

Norton Rose Fulbright LLP

Novum Energy

Principal

Allyson Pritchett

Mr. Todd Reppert

James and Nathanael  Rosenheim

Susan D. Sarofim

Dian and Harlan Stai

Sheila Swartzman

Rhonda and Donald Sweeney

Dr. and Mrs. Demetrio  Tagaropulos

Texas Commission on the Arts

Tokio Marine HCC

Isabel and Ignacio Torras

Alejandra and Héctor Torres

John G. Turner and  Jerry G. Fischer

Veer Vasishta

Vinson & Elkins

Westlake Corporation

The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

First place went to mezzo-soprano Natalie Lewis.

ON TOP OF THE WORLD

The winners of Concert of Arias 2023

Over 900 candidates applied to compete in this year’s Concert of Arias, the 35th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers, but only eight gifted artists made it to the live final round of the competition at the Wortham’s Cullen Theater, where they each sang two arias for a buzzing crowd during an exciting evening!

“It was positively thrilling to see these remarkable young artists give it their all tonight as they stepped onto the Wortham stage,” said HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor. “Their passion filled our hearts, and the evening was an inspiring reminder of why we do what we do at HGO: nurture the gifts of the most talented emerging artists in opera, who in turn will push our entire art form forward.”

The winners of this year’s competition were chosen by a panel of distinguished judges— Dastoor, Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, and HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers—with HGO Artistic Advisor Ana María Martínez selecting the winner of her annual Encouragement Award, and audiences in the theater and streaming from home voting for their own winners. Congratulations to all!

Here is who took home top honors for 2023:

• 1st Place prize of $10,000 was awarded to Natalie Lewis, mezzo-soprano

• 2nd Place prize of $5,000 went to Demetrious Sampson, Jr., tenor

• 3rd Place prize of $3,000 was won by Michael McDermott, tenor

• The Ana María Martínez Encouragement Award of $2,000 went to Gabrielle Turgeon, soprano

• The Audience Choice Award went to Demetrious Sampson, Jr., tenor

• The Online Viewers’ Choice Award went to Natalie Lewis, mezzo-soprano

SEMPRE SENSATIONAL

Join us for Verdi’a La traviata at Miller Outdoor Theatre!

Good news for Houston opera lovers: after opening the season with Verdi’s classic masterpiece, La traviata, HGO is bringing the opera back this spring for two nights at Hermann Park’s Miller Outdoor Theatre!

The tragic tale of Parisian courtesan Violetta and her dear Alfredo, torn apart by a society that cannot accept their love, is adored the world over. This revival of Arin Arbus’s production offers audiences an excellent opportunity to see a full opera led by Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio artists—including soprano Meryl Dominguez as Violetta and tenor Ricardo Garcia as Alfredo. Anthony Clark Evans, who made his company debut last fall as Alfredo’s father Germont in select performances, reprises the role during these outdoor performances, with HGO Resident Conductor Alex Amsel at the podium.

Pack a picnic, grab a friend, and head for the hill for a night of superlative opera under the stars. Performances of La traviata take place at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, May 19 and 20. Free! For more information, visit HGO.org.

Photo credit: Michael Bishop

Arin Arbus's celebrated production heads to Miller Outdoor Theatre.

Photo credit: Lynn Lane

WHAT A NIGHT!

Giving Voice at Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church: a spectacular success

For our fourth annual Giving Voice, HGO partnered with Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church, the Houston Ebony Opera Guild, Prairie View A&M University, and Texas Southern University. The concert was presented outside the Wortham Theater Center for the first time, at the new Cathedral of the historic Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church in the Third Ward. The founder of WABC, Reverend William A. Lawson, said the evening was "absolutely perfect as a part of Black History Month."

A record 2,000 audience members came out to celebrate Black artists in the community, with more than 11,000 viewers streaming the event online. The crowd was wowed by the awe-inspiring roster of talent, which included world-famous tenors George Shirley and Lawrence Brownlee; beloved soprano Nicole Heaston; Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio artists Renée Richardson and Cory McGee; pianist Kevin J. Miller; the world-class HGO Chorus; and the incredible choirs from the presenting partner organizations.

“It was a night of pure joy,” said HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor, “one of the most personally moving and impactful performances I have ever attended.”

Clockwise from top right: Cory McGee and Renée Richardson; Kevin J. Miller and Lawrence Brownlee; Khori Dastoor with the Reverend Dr. Marcus Cosby; George Shirley.

Photo credits: Latroya Brooks

IN MEMORIAM: JANICE HOOD BARROW

October 21, 1928 – December 16, 2022

On December 16, 2022, HGO lost one of our most generous and loyal benefactors, Janice Barrow. Jan was an eternal optimist who always found humor and the best in every situation. She and her late husband, Tom (HGO Board Chair, 1985-87), were an integral part of the HGO family for over 40 years. Classical music was their passion and they loved coming to HGO performances. Their support impacted almost every area of the company—from underwriting productions, especially those of Richard Wagner, to Concert of Arias, to investing in the training of young artists in the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio. That legacy will live on next season when HGO presents Wagner’s Parsifal, a production Jan believed in and supported. Connecting with young artists was one of Jan’s greatest joys, and she maintained those friendships for life. Jan was a member of HGO’s Impresarios Circle and its Laureate Society. She will be remembered for her gracious spirit and infectious love of powerful music.

Timeless

Australia is home to the world’s oldest indigenous culture. Today, the ancient Aboriginal spirit survives, with both its traditions and aspirations reflected in contemporary paintings unlike any other.

Cultures evolve. So has Booker-Lowe! Our gallery on Feagan is closed, and we now show Aboriginal art by appointment only, and provide personalized searches for artworks, as well as other art services.

Booker • Lowe Gallery

Aboriginal fine art of Australia since 2002

For infomation or to schedule a visit: www.bookerlowegallery.com info@bookerlowegallery.com

Theo (Faye) Nangala Hudson, Fire Country Dreaming, 18” x 36” Image © the artist and Booker-Lowe

We believe there are many paths to investment success; one size does not fit all.

We take a time-tested approach to investing for the long term, motivated only by your unique investment objectives.

houstontrust.com

Dear Opera Patron,

On behalf of Ajamie LLP, welcome to Houston Grand Opera's spring repertoire of Tosca and Salome. Ajamie is excited to present these breathtaking performances to conclude HGO's 2022-23 extraordinary season.

Ajamie is a leading international litigation boutique with offices in Houston and New York. We have won over $1 billion in awards and settlements, one of a small number of elite law firms to have done so. Our cases and client base span the globe, as do the causes we support.

Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as Tosca at HGO in 2015

Dear Opera Patron,

On behalf of Vinson & Elkins LLP, welcome to the Wortham Theater Center for a stunning performance of Puccini’s Tosca, presented by Houston Grand Opera. Our firm is delighted to underwrite this wonderful production in HGO’s 2022-23 season.

Vinson & Elkins LLP was founded in Houston more than 100 years ago. Today, we are a pre-eminent global law firm, with 11 offices and over 700 lawyers worldwide. A cornerstone of our firm culture is our belief in using our talents and resources to enhance the local community, including supporting the world-class arts and culture partners, like HGO, that make Houston such a vibrant place to call home.

Vinson & Elkins LLP cherishes its long history and strong relationship with HGO. In , the firm also supports HGO through board leadership, special events, and pro bono legal services as the

Thank you for joining us. We are excited to share this performance with you, and

SHE’S IN LOVE,AND SO ARE WE

A conversation with game-changing director-choreographer Jawole Willa Jo

By Khori Dastoor General Director & CEO

Several years ago, when Jawole Willa Jo Zollar was considering coming on board as a co-creator, with composer Jake Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer, of HGO-commissioned world-premiere opera Intelligence, she decided she needed to meet the two in person.

She wanted to know: “Am I going to like working with these people? Do I like them? And I just really liked them.” Jawole laughs, recounting the memory during our recent chat over Zoom, and sharing that for her these days, that’s a prerequisite.

“I had a lot of questions, and there wasn’t even an outline yet. And it was a kind of discovery, of how we could work together, and the voice that I could bring to the work as a Black woman.” As the trio spent time together, Jawole discovered she was not only drawn to the story Intelligence was going to tell, but also to the art form of opera itself. She decided she was in.

Zollar

Jawole founded Urban Bush Women—the groundbreaking Brooklyn-based dance ensemble that centers the perspective of Black women—in 1984, but it is only in recent years that she has received overdue widespread recognition. In 2020, the Ford Foundation named UBW one of “America’s Cultural Treasures.” In 2021, Jawole received a MacArthur “genius grant.” That same year, UBW received a $3 million gift from MacKenzie Scott. And in 2022, Jawole received the coveted Gish Prize for pushing society forward while breaking boundaries in art.

To describe Jawole as in-demand would be a severe understatement. It is a major coup for HGO and for Houston that she is not only choreographing and directing Intelligence which will open HGO’s 2023-24 season in the fall—but also that eight dancers from Urban Bush Women will help to tell its story.

Intelligence combines words, music, and dance to share a Civil War-era story inspired by real events, of two women who formed a pro-Union spy ring and changed the course of

history: the brilliant Mary Jane Bowser, enslaved by the Van Lew family, and the undercover abolitionist Elizabeth Van Lew. It is also the story of Mary Jane’s personal journey of discovery, as she discovers secrets of her own past.

Why is opera the right vehicle for this story? “I think it was Jake who said, opera functions best when it’s an intimate story told on a grand scale,” says Jawole. “These characters are wrestling with the state of the world, and how they want to make change in it, and their own lives and secrets. Everybody’s holding some kind of secret. And I think, as human beings, there’s a truth to that in all of us. And so here, opera allows for a big rendering of that very personal thing—why did I lie? ”

It was Jake’s music that made Jawole realize that the UBW dancers, which she refers to in Intelligence as the Is-WasWill, were right for this opera. Ballet dancers, originally brought up as an idea, would not cut it. “Like, no,” she says. “That’s not the right physicality. For me, Jake’s music is so emotional. I feel it on such a visceral level, and I felt, I’ve got to match this—and that’s already the style of how I create.

“It looks to people, sometimes, like an unrehearsed physicality. Of course, we rehearsed many, many hours to look like it’s spontaneous. But I wanted to feel that urgency— from the heart and the gut and the mind—that I think is so prevalent in Jake’s music.”

Jawole has never directed an opera before. Nevertheless, this moment feels destined. “I came into dance during the ’80s postmodern movement, which was kind of detached emotionally,” she explains, adding that she has often been criticized for the big emotion she brings to the stage. “When I realized, Oh, that’s what opera does, I don’t have to pull back from that—that was really exciting.”

The truth is, Jawole has never pulled back from emotion. She has always taken her own path, and from the beginning, she and the Urban Bush Women have combined storytelling with music. Her entry into opera is a natural one.

As we close our chat, I want to know: after Intelligence is birthed into the world, will she continue to explore the art form of opera? “Oh, yes, absolutely,” she smiles. “I’m in love. I’ve converted.” The feeling is mutual, Jawole. Welcome. ∎

Left: Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is creating new opera Intelligence with Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer. Photo credit: Cylla Von Tiedemann

Below: Zollar founded Urban Bush Women in 1984. Eight members will perform in Intelligence. Photo credits: Ayano Hisa and Hayim Heron.

with the HGO Guild.

a dd your drama! Our volunteering opportunities include:

• The Young Artists Vocal Academy (YAVA) is an intensive one-week training for young professional singers to work on their vocal techniques and acting skills. We are looking for drivers to provide airport transportation to and from downtown, plus join in hospitality and fun (May).

• The HGO Studio Buddies Program is an award-winning program that welcomes artists and makes Houston feel like home! You can volunteer to adopt a Studio Artist and be their in-town family, enjoy fun music events, and more.

• The Guild Artist Hospitality and Assistance Program welcomes visiting artists to Houston while helping to ease their stay! The hospitality you offer guests instills a fondness for Houston, and adds to HGO’s appeal to artists.

Join HGO Guild for more!

Opera in the park and p re-p erf O rmance d inner!

Join us to see HGO’s production of La traviata at Miller Outdoor Theatre, Hermann Park on Friday, May 19. Come join us at 6:30 p.m. for a moderately-priced box lunch, plus wine or soft drink. Call (713) 546-0269 or email guild@hgoguild.org for more information and to register.

Guild Underwriters include Andrew Bowen and Efrain Corzo, Anne Schelleng and Maren Mitchell, James and Alice Storm, Theresa Einhorn, Lynn Gissel, Lois Glover, Joy Hester, Ann Koster, Robert and Pamela Krinock, Ana Martin and Cecelia Duclous, Susie and Jim Pokorski, Fiona Toth, Kenneth Williams, and Betty Winters.

The HGO Guild’s Boutique features DVDs, artisan jewelry, home furnishings, apparel, and HGO logo merchandise.

&Salome Sex, Scandal,

By Jeremy Johnson, Dramaturg and Associate Director of New Works

Richard Strauss’s opera, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, still shocks 118 years later.

On his birthday Herod gave a banquet for his high officials and military commanders and the leading men of Galilee. When the daughter of Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his dinner guests.

The king said to the girl, “Ask me for anything you want, and I’ll give it to you.” And he promised her with an oath, “Whatever you ask I will give you, up to half my kingdom.”

She went out and said to her mother, “What shall I ask for?”

“The head of John the Baptist,” she answered.

Salome’s story first appears in the Bible, in a passage of fewer than ten verses in the Gospel of Mark. Her role is so minor, the story does not even mention her name. In this context, it is her mother Herodias who wants John the Baptist beheaded, because he preached against her incestuous marriage to her late husband’s brother.

Salome was identified by name around the year 100 A.D., in a book of antiquities by Flavius Josephus. Though her story is not particularly sensual or suggestive in the Bible, Salome’s dance for her stepfather struck an inappropriate chord with early Christians, and she became a symbol for the dangers of a woman’s sexuality. The lore of her dance, and its conclusion in the death of a Christian prophet, became a warning: women’s sexuality and seduction of men put them in grave peril. Dozens of medieval and Renaissance paintings caution men against the danger.

By the 19th century, however, the view of Salome shifted from warning to exploration: she evolved from the Renaissance’s fully-clothed harbinger of death to the fin de siècle’s alluring—and nude—confrontation of traditional morality. Poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote his symbolist exploration of the story, Hérodiade, in 1864, while French Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau depicted her more than one hundred times throughout the 19th century. Both Hérodiade and one of Moreau’s paintings, The Apparition, inspired Oscar Wilde’s 1891 French play, Salomé, which in turn served as the basis for Richard Strauss’s opera Salome, first performed in 1905.

Though we now associate “decadence” with luxuriously indulgent chocolate ice cream, the term shares its etymology with the verb “to decay”: as an artistic style, it was so labeled by its critics for the decaying of society’s morality. Literary decadence was associated with transgressive and dissident sexual desires, an interest in the perverse, and an artificial air of ennui toward any perceived moral code.

Aesthetic decadence was meant to disturb and astound us, and Wilde was one of the finest playwrights in the style. The degeneration of society and culture was its crime: a book titled Degeneration, written by Max Nordau in 1892, devoted a major section to Wilde, saying he “loves immorality, sin, and crime.”

Wilde’s Salome, while influenced by his contemporaries, was also inspired by the Renaissance depictions. Referencing a Bernardino Luini painting of her that, at the time, was inaccurately attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, Wilde said, “Her lips in Leonardo’s painting disclose the cruelty of her soul. Her lust must need be infinite, and her perversity without limits.”

Wilde, not a fan of the apparent docility of the biblical Salome, sought to hypersexualize the story, employing the decadent aesthetic of overemphasizing the perverse to interrogate traditional morality. It should almost be seen as an inevitable conclusion, then, that his Salome would take her lust to the necrophilic act of kissing the beheaded John the Baptist. With that, the shocking history of the Wilde play—and the Strauss opera—began.

The play was banned from performance in London, officially because London theaters could not portray biblical scenes on the stage. But the real cause was certainly its scandalous plot: the London examiner of plays at the time said, “It is a miracle of impudence. Salome’s love turns to fury because John will not let her kiss him in the mouth.” One of the play’s rare complimentary reactions came from Mallarmé himself, who said to Wilde, “I marvel that, while everything in your Salome is expressed in constant, dazzling strokes, there also arises, on each page, the unutterable and the Dream.”

“I won’t do it; I’m a decent woman.”

Those words are attributed to Marie Wittich, the first soprano to sing the title role in Strauss’s gripping Salome, about her willingness to perform the opera. She sang it anyway, but her initial opinion aptly sums up the early 20th-century reaction to Salome: that of decency versus decadence.

Wilde, of course, was persona non grata to critics of decadence. The moralistic reaction to the style, and to Wilde himself, set the stage for the highly publicized 1895 trials that convicted Wilde of “gross indecency” under recently passed legislation in England that made homosexual acts punishable under the law. Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor. While his conviction was directly related to 19th-century views on homosexuality, there is no doubt it was also indirectly related to his 1891 portrayal of Salome, in that she was a symbol for a dissident interrogation of moral codes in a rapidly changing society.

Five years after its publication—when Wilde was in prison— the play finally was produced in France, where it was widely criticized as a mask for Wilde’s homosexuality, erotic alter

“I won’t do it; I’m a decent woman.”

ego, and artistic nonconformity, which had less to do with the content of the play than with Wilde’s reputation. While the playwright’s intent is open to interpretation, his work scandalized a society resistant to decadence. The opera had a similar reception.

—

After attending Wilde’s play in a German translation by Hedwig Lachmann, Strauss decided to adapt the libretto himself nearly word for word from that version. When the opera premiered in Dresden in 1905, the public loved it and demanded 38 curtain calls—but the social intelligentsia and the music critics were appalled. The opera was variously referred to as “sheer noise,” “intentional cacophony,” and “choice ugliness.” The censorship board in Vienna prevented Gustav Mahler from programming the opera there, saying, “I cannot overcome the objectionable nature of the whole story, and can only repeat that the representation of events which belong to the realm of sexual pathology is not suitable for our Court stage.”

Salome received its American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in 1907, but the daughter of banker J.P. Morgan was gravely offended at the Met’s final dress rehearsal of the piece. Morgan himself, a member of the Met Board, summoned a special meeting of the other Board members—the day after opening night—to force the opera house to cancel the rest of the performances. Salome was subsequently prohibited from the Met stage for nearly 30 years. Nevertheless, in its first two years, Strauss’s Salome played to over 50 theaters in Germany—a society that, after the turn of the century, had embraced the modernist aesthetic ushered in by artistic decadence.

Houston, Texas, in the year 1956, might not seem, at first blush, to be a city that also would embrace artistic decadence. And yet, on January 19, 1956, Houston Grand Opera presented its very first opera—Strauss’s Salome. Only 50 years after the opera’s scandalous premiere, soprano Brenda Lewis portrayed the iconic role in a city that had never had a professional opera company. Since then, we have performed Salome in 1968 with Felicia Weathers; in 1977 with Grace Bumbry; in 1987 with Josephine Barstow; and in 1997 with Hildegard Behrens.

In a post-pandemic society, changing as rapidly if not more so than fin de siècle Europe, we return to Salome for the first time in 26 years, and the opera is still shocking, scandalous, explicit—and remarkably daring. The company launching with Salome in 1956 set bold expectations for HGO’s future that continue to define its path.

Nina Vance, former director of the Alley Theatre and a founding board member of HGO, commented on this choice in 1956, saying, “A touring company cannot risk mounting a production such as Salome. Herein, I think, lies our greatest expectation. A locally governed, non-profit, civic enterprise, as is the Houston Grand Opera Association, can give us the opportunity to enjoy these masterworks of musical literature that we might otherwise never know.”

It is in our DNA at Houston Grand Opera to present works that are new, that are rare, that question norms like Oscar Wilde did, that challenge us and excite us. Salome reminds us of where we came from, and where we can go in this grandest of art forms. And if you’re less interested in interrogating society with Salome and more interested in simply being entertained, you’ll be in good company: after the 1905 dress rehearsal ended, Richard Strauss stood up, turned around to the audience who sat in stunned silence, smiled, and said, “Well, I rather enjoyed that.”

Felicia Weathers in Salome at HGO in 1968

The Butlers' extraordinary gift was announced in February at the Concert of Arias.

THE GIFT OF OPERA

By Catherine Matusow

One recent morning, Sarah and Ernest Butler were sitting in their kitchen, having just returned to their Austin home after enjoying Houston Grand Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro

The Austin-based couple have been subscribers since HGO moved into its current home in the Wortham Theater Center, in 1987. Ever since, they’ve driven into Houston for every HGO production, missing one only very rarely. “We plan our travel around HGO’s schedule, first and foremost,” explained Ernest.

The Butlers adore arts and culture in its many forms, but it is opera that holds the dearest place in their hearts. “Opera involves everything,” Sarah said. Her husband nodded in agreement, recalling the vibrant production they’d just seen, which had reset the story of Figaro and his bride-to-be Susanna in the 1960s.

“There was fun dancing in The Marriage of Figaro,” Ernest smiled, “sophisticated dancing.” Never mind the vivid costumes and set, the superb artists, and—but of course—the peerless Mozart: “I could listen to his music every day of my life,” Ernest said, “and never get tired of it.”

“The productions at the Wortham are so big,” said Sarah. “Nothing matches it.”

But as the couple explained, they see HGO’s impact as reaching far beyond the walls of the Wortham. The artistic excellence that is the company’s hallmark—that makes HGO known across the world—serves the entire region, including their home city of Austin.

That is why the Butlers have supported HGO for decades. Most recently, after the onset of COVID, they made the entire HGO Digital, the Sarah and Ernest Butler Performance Series possible with an essential $1 million

Sarah and Ernest Butler make a historic investment in HGO’s future.

Photo credit: Michael Bishop

donation that supported the Texas Opera Alliance, a strategic partnership between HGO and four other companies throughout the state that enabled the production of shareable digital art during the pandemic—and helped companies come out of it with the tools to continue to share opera digitally with audiences close to home and abroad.

That is why one of the Butlers’ favorite events has long been HGO’s annual Concert of Arias, a celebration of the future of opera where the most talented up-and-coming artists compete for entry into the company's prestigious Studio training program, whose graduates go on to major careers in opera, performing in houses across Texas and the world.

And that is why, earlier this year, this incredible couple made the largest gift to HGO that the company has received in its entire history, creating a fund within the HGO Endowment valued at $22 million that will grow over time and support HGO for generations.

Fittingly, it was at this year’s Concert of Arias that Khori Dastoor, HGO’s General Director and CEO, would announce the Butlers’ historic gift: “It is my great pleasure to share this extraordinary news, news that will transform HGO’s ability to support the future of the art,” Dastoor told the audience at the Wortham’s Cullen Theater.

“I am thrilled to announce that this visionary couple is the new naming partner for our Studio, which from this moment forward will be called the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio.”

manufacturer of booths for hearing tests, musical practice, and broadcasting. The company’s eventual sale would enable the Butlers to become the philanthropists they have now been for decades, making an outsize impact on art and culture in Austin, Houston, and our entire region.

Today, in addition to HGO, through their generosity and leadership the couple supports Austin Opera; Ballet Austin; the Austin Symphony Orchestra; the Texas Cultural Trust; the UT Butler School of Music, which has carried their name since 2008; and a host of other organizations.

Sarah and Ernest Butler met as undergrads at Baylor in the 1950s. She was from San Antonio, he was from the small town of Mabank in East Texas, and they found themselves working side by side in the school registrar’s office. “We sat together and visited a lot and had a lot of fun talking,” Sarah recalled, “and eventually, we went out together.”

The pair got married and moved to Houston, where Ernest attended Baylor Medical School, studying to become an otolaryngologist, and Sarah taught beginning and high school level Spanish at Spring Branch ISD. It was here in Houston that they discovered the arts and began to develop an appreciation that would grow and grow.

“Houston Symphony gave away free tickets to medical students and nursing students when we were in school,” recalled Ernest, “and we happily took those because that was the only way we could go.” Added Sarah: “And they would give us tickets to the Alley—which was really in an alley—and it was theater in the round.”

In 1969 the couple moved to Austin, where they would raise their two children. Ernest became a founding partner of the Austin Ear Nose and Throat Clinic and, a couple of years later, founded Acoustic Systems, a

While opera is their favorite among all the art forms, it wasn’t until the 1970s that the Butlers began exploring it. Lifelong learners, the two enrolled in a continuing education course at UT taught by Walter Ducloux— head of the university’s department of opera, and eventual founder of Austin Opera—who led bus groups to Dallas and Houston, where they would take in Sunday matinees at Jones Hall. “The last performance that we saw at Jones Hall was Turandot,” remembered Sarah, “and it was there that we decided that we would buy tickets to the Wortham.”

The Butlers became HGO subscribers, thus launching a relationship with the company that would last 35 years and counting, transforming both their own lives and the company’s future.

The two have traveled to 145 countries together. They have visited all the world’s major opera houses and regularly take in opera and ballet performances wherever they land. Asked what’s coming up, they mentioned plans to visit the Dominican Republic, Portugal, Thailand, Singapore, and Sydney

Sarah and Ernest Butler are collectors—of experiences.

"I AM THRILLED TO ANNOUNCE THAT THIS VISIONARY COUPLE IS THE NEW NAMING PARTNER FOR OUR STUDIO." —KHORI DASTOOR

The Butlers want to support HGO through the next century.

Photo credit: Thomas Guerrero

They keep a book where they’ve recorded years of intensive birdwatching, an endeavor they undertook after Ernest semi-retired in 1989. They have neatly recorded the dates and locations of every species they’ve spotted over the years—almost 6,000 of them—while having many an adventure along the way.

“We got all seven dippers that exist in the world that we know of,” Sarah said. “They build their nest in overgrowth hanging over a waterfall or a stream of some sort, and they forage around on the bottom of the stream. They dip.”

Ernest recalled tracking the Andean cock-of-the-rock through Venezuela. “It’s a bird that’s about this tall,” he said, holding his hands a foot apart. “It’s scarlet-orange. It’s extremely difficult to see. You have to find it… Well, finding a trail was difficult because it was jungle.”

After three days of tracking, they got a lead—one that led them right down a precarious, muddy hillside that they slid down, grabbing onto roots along the way. “You could hear them as you approached,” recalled Ernest, “and they were chorusing. There must have been 20, 25.”

The Butlers aren’t the type of birders who take photos. For them, it is all about the experience in the moment, and about learning—“you know, what their habitat is, how they sing, how they live,” said Ernest.

These days, their birdwatching has slowed down, but as Ernest explained, he and Sarah still keep their eyes peeled. “I take opera glasses with me when I travel,” he said with a grin. —

In much the same way, the Butlers are collectors of cultural experiences, possessed of open minds, a desire to learn, and omnivorous taste. In addition to beloved classic works from the repertoire, they relish the opportunity to experience new and rarely seen operas.

Asked about their favorite opera or opera genre, the couple demurred. “We don’t really have a favorite,” Ernest explained. “We just like to see things done extremely well and—if we’ve seen it before, which, chances are, we have by now—with a different take on it.”

“We keep learning,” added Sarah. “There’s always something to learn. And as you learn, maybe one thing would have been a favorite, and that changes.”

They did mention a pair of HGO operas they recently had enjoyed. “No one had seen The Wreckers before,” said Ernest, referring to HGO’s fall production of Dame Ethel Smyth’s 1906 opera, its first full production from a major American opera company. “And that turned out to be an extraordinary choral production.”

Sarah cited Javier Martínez and Leonard Foglia’s holiday mariachi opera, El Milagro del Recuerdo, a company-commissioned world premiere from 2019, as another success. “We loved El Milagro, and I think that the Spanish-speaking population will appreciate more of this language in opera,” she said. “I think that’s also important for the future.”

Up next in the season was Massenet’s rarely produced opera about a young poet destroyed by love, Werther, and the Butlers were looking forward to it. “We’ve seen Werther before, but that was 20 years ago,” said Ernest. “That was in Vienna with a European cast. And now I’m ready to see it again, particularly with the cast Houston has.”

Sitting in the kitchen with them that sunny morning, it was clear just how much HGO’s 2022-23 season alone had already enriched the Butlers’ lives, never mind all the grand opera they had experienced with the company over 35 seasons.

And what was beautiful: the same enrichment HGO has provided them, they explained, they want to share with others—as many people as possible, in as large a region as possible. The historic gift they are making to the company is a strategic one, undertaken after serious thought, and with careful planning.

“We’ve followed the HGO Studio and

The Butlers at Cloud Forest Lodge in Ecuador.

V A LIVING

P

uccini’s Tosca, first as a famousbutnow-forgotten play, is one of the few indestructibly enduring operas, and the title role remains a destination achievement for great sopranos. The play was written in 1887 by the once-famous Victorien Sardou for his era’s most compelling actress, the French Sarah Bernhardt, who performed it all over the world, including many U.S. cities, where she packed houses playing the role in French with an English-speaking supporting cast. Puccini’s was the first opera of the 20th century, opening in early January of 1900, and it has been uniquely popular from that moment, long eclipsing the play.

Tosca was but one of Bernhardt’s iconic roles. Most famously, she played Marguerite in The Lady of the

Tamara Wilson sang the role of Turandot at HGO last season.

Photo credit, bottom: Lynn Lane.

A COMPLETE LIST OF TAMARA WILSON’S

APPEARANCES AT HOUSTON GRAND OPERA:

CUPID

The Coronation of Poppea, spring 2006 (debut)

COUNTESS ALMAVIVA

The Marriage of Figaro, spring 2006

BUBIKOPF

The Kaiser from Atlantis, fall 2006

CLORINDA

La Cenerentola (Cinderella), winter 2007 (with Joyce DiDonato)

PRIESTESS

Aida, spring 2007 (to Svetlina Vassileva’s Aida)

like all of her era, were focused on a conscious lack of realism. Indeed, showing that you were acting was a hallmark of the Bernhardt era, and so was the upholding of long-standing traditions.

Duse, by contrast, was new, progressive, radical, and all about realism: she used very little make-up by the standards of the day, and portrayed real tears and emotions. She could mesmerize an audience by showing how similar she was to them, something that could never have been said about Bernhardt. In the rivalry between these two actresses, acting changed forever: traditionalists loved Bernhardt and loathed the emotion of Duse, whereas more forward-looking patrons found Bernhardt hopelessly old-fashioned. With the advent of film, realistic acting became a necessity for the camera. Duse lives on in our language to this day, where some will still describe a major event as a “doozie.”

Giacomo Puccini’s searing Tosca is the most purely Italian of the Italian operas, with its Roman setting, its mixture of the worlds of politics and religion, its intrigue, jealousy, and overt passions. Puccini’s score soars passionately, tunefully, and memorably; it does not have a single unrequired note.

Tosca has the most loathsome of villains in Scarpia, yet he is also creepily alluring. Cavaradossi is the most ardent of lovers, plus he’s a freedom fighter willing to die for his ideals. He’s given away as an atheist in a religious world by a single word uttered by the Sacristan, who calls him a “Voltarian!” Above all, this opera has the magnificent title character, ennobled by her chosen profession (she is a celebrated opera singer, of course!) and by her deep faith. The symbolism of Tosca is still potent because it is so clear: the title character as the suffering and generous religious figure vs. Cavaradossi the dangerously revolutionary atheist, with Scarpia as the corrupt power broker between church and state.

Tosca is a great star part, but what does stardom mean now here in the 21st century? We don’t do public rivalries like Bernhardt and Duse anymore, much less like Callas and Tebaldi. HGO’s Tosca this season, Tamara Wilson, is as

PÁSEK’S WIFE

The Cunning Little Vixen, spring 2007

AMELIA

A Masked Ball, fall 2007

KONSTANZE

The Abduction from the Seraglio, winter 2008

MISS JESSEL

The Turn of the Screw, winter 2010

great a singing artist as has ever been in any era. Yes, I mean exactly that. And so are Joyce DiDonato, Ailyn Perez, Jamie Barton, Michael Spyres, Matthew Polenzani, and a couple of dozen others currently working. I adore them, as do my colleagues all over the world. Audiences love them. They inspire us all, but they simply are not famous on the level of their contemporaries a half-century ago, for reasons that have nothing to do with their talent.

There is a stubborn belief, probably because we all so fervently want it to be true, that if someone gets enough publicity, they will become famous. Not only has this not been true for at least a generation, in any field, but today, in our relatively new internet era, people now become famous for no discernible reason. In the past, largely, accomplishment was the reason we knew someone’s name: Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, and Luciano Pavarotti were extremely famous, as were Grace Moore, Lily Pons, and Risë Stevens a generation before them—and their names were known to millions who had never attended an opera. This is virtually impossible in the 21st century, especially in professions like opera singing and ballet dancing, arts that require an enormous amount of legacy training and technique just to get to the starting point. Fame now follows those who are themselves followed, meaning they have to be sought out.

Setting fame aside, the 2020s pool of talent in opera is astonishing, which many will find surprising when so few people can name an opera star. And leading that talent, one artist continually dazzles her colleagues to a degree that is challenging to describe: the soprano Tamara Wilson.

Between various organizations, I have for decades heard between five to six hundred auditions a year, which add up to many thousands in my professional life. Though efficient, auditions are actually one of the worst ways to get to know a singer, which explains why most fade quickly into memory. Mercifully few stand out for being memorably bad, and a few joyous ones live forever for possessing that joyous moment of revelation that an important new voice is in the world. Tamara Wilson was one of those.

Photo credits from left: HGO Staff and Brett Coomer.

I remember the first moment I heard her, in 2005, as though it was this morning. She was a member of the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio from 2005-07. Back then we knew she was already an extraordinary singer, but little did we know what she would be capable of 2023: in the past year alone she has performed the incredibly demanding roles of Puccini’s Turandot (at HGO and Amsterdam), Wagner’s Isolde (at Santa Fe Opera), Elvira in Verdi’s Ernani (at Lyric Opera of Chicago), and now her first Tosca. These composers all have extremely specific stylistic, dramatic, and vocal demands, and very few singers can manage even one of them, much less all four. There have been very few singers in history with such a range of styles within their grasp.

Though Tamara, Tammy to all who know her, sings all over the world now, her range is evident in her history at HGO alone: in the fall following her Butler Studio years, an opportunity arose (via the last-minute cancellation of a “name”) to take on Amelia in Verdi’s A Masked Ball. Tammy winning the role caused some controversy at the time because she was so young, and there was still, at least at that moment, an open prejudice about Studio artists vs. “stars”—yet there was literally not a single artist in the world, then or now, who could sell out a performance of Verdi’s opera. Tammy pretty much wiped the floor with an experienced and fine cast in that Masked Ball. Ramon Vargas, starring in the opera with her, told me in the early rehearsals that Tammy had the greatest natural instrument he’d ever heard. Even Ewa Podles, not known for complimenting anyone’s singing but her own, was dumbstruck by her. We all were.

Local critics, flummoxed by not knowing her because of her age, had no idea how to react or write about her, but she took this in elegant stride. Tammy is one of the most self-aware and intelligent artists I’ve come across in a long career. There is nothing about herself of which she is unaware, nor is there anything she doesn’t accept and own. She knows her own talent, which is no small feat for an artist. It is a common coping mechanism of artistry to have a healthy dose of selfdelusion. Not Tammy. She will almost always be the smartest person in the room, and she is unshakeable. But, like a few

others I’ve known on her level, she is unassuming, humble, and seemingly unaware of the actual level of her gifts.

After the success of Ballo, she accepted another cancellation, the famously challenging Konstanze in Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, making her the first and probably last singer since Maria Callas to perform Ballo and Abduction in the same year. She has performed several Verdi roles at HGO: Don Carlos’s Elizabeth, Trovatore’s Leonora, and the title role in Aida. An early foray into German music, which will become the focus of her vocal life now that she is in her full maturity, was as Chrysothemis to Christine Goerke’s Elektra in Strauss’s Elektra in our hurricane season at the Resilience Theater.

Beyond everything else about her, there is that voice Tammy’s voice is rich, resonant, and effortlessly produced. The reason she can sing almost anything and sound idiomatic doing so is simple to describe but very hard to achieve: technique. Put simply, singing evenly over your whole vocal range, at a full range of dynamics, is full technical mastery of the voice. Yes, people are born with vocal capacities, some better than others, but it is technique, especially in opera, that allows you to become a full artist in the field. Acting in opera, ultimately, is only possible when vocal technique is within one’s full grasp, because you need technique to let yourself go as an actor, and in this, too, Tammy is exemplary— directors love her because she will probe as deeply as they do.

Last season, her Turandot in Robert Wilson’s gorgeous production had us all gasping for superlatives. Longtime members of the HGO Chorus were in tears in the rehearsal room just from witnessing the sheer vocal mastery and power of Tammy’s singing and the discipline of her acting performance. Robert Wilson was besotted with her, because she could fill his highly stylized vision with emotion. The natural next step of her artistic evolution was naturally Tosca, and how appropriate that she returns here to her home theater to debut it. ∎

Photo credits from left: Felix Sanchez and Lynn Lane

DONORS MAKE GREAT ART POSSIBLE

Ticket sales cover less than 20% of producing great opera. Your contributions make up the rest. It’s donors like you who bring grand opera to the Wortham Stage.

Your gift to HGO gives you exclusive and behind-the-scenes benefits like valet parking, lecture series, and Green Room access.

For more information on benefits, visit HGO.org/DONATE. Please contact David Krohn, director of philanthropy, at 713-980-8685 or DKrohn@HGO.org.

CONTRIBUTING MEMBER

FELLOW

CONTRIBUTING FELLOW

ASSOCIATE PATRON

NATIONAL PATRONS CIRCLE

YOUNG PATRONS CIRCLE

PATRONS CIRCLE

NATIONAL TRUSTEE

YOUNG TRUSTEE

TRUSTEE

UNDERWRITER

UNDERWRITERS

TAGAROPULOS

An Opera in Three Acts

The performance lasts approximately 2 hours and 36 minutes, including two intermissions.

A co-production with Lyric Opera of Chicago.

BY UIGI ILLICA AND GIUSEPPE GIACOSA

The activities of Houston Grand Opera are supported in part by funds provided by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

MUSIC BY GIA COMO PUCCINI

LIBRETTO

SUNG IN ITALIAN WITH PROJECTED ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Quick Start Guide

THE OPERA IN ONE SENTENCE

When Cavaradossi is captured after helping a political prisoner escape, the corrupt chief of police Baron Scarpia offers Cavaradossi’s life in exchange for Tosca’s submission—but Tosca has other plans.

BACKGROUND

Tosca is based on the five-act play La Tosca by French playwright Victorien Sardou, which premiered in Paris in 1887. Sardou, one of the most successful French playwrights of the 19th century, is synonymous with what was to become known as “the well-made play”—a play written in the neoclassical style with a concise plot and a dramatic climax. Much of the story takes place before the action of the play begins, and the twists and turns of the plot are often revealed through letters, or papers falling into the wrong hands. Many of Sardou’s later plays, including La Tosca, were written for the famous actress Sarah Bernhardt.

Puccini likely saw La Tosca with Bernhardt in the title role in Milan in 1889. Hugely excited by the play, Puccini wasted no time in contacting his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, to request permission from Sardou for his play to be adapted into an opera. In his letter to Ricordi, Puccini’s enthusiasm for the play is clear, saying, “In this Tosca I see the opera which exactly suits me, one without excessive proportions, one which is a decorative spectacle, and one which gives opportunity for an abundance of music.” He would first write Manon Lescaut in 1893 followed by La bohème in 1896, before again joining forces with librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa for Tosca, which premiered in Rome on January 14, 1900.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

The opera opens with three crashing chords played by the entire orchestra, written in the keys of B-flat major, A-flat major, and E major. The musical interval between B-flat and E is an augmented fourth, or a tritone, an interval that had been known in the European Middle Ages as the diabolus in musica—the devil in music. These three chords will be heard throughout the opera and are most strongly associated with the character of the evil chief of police Baron Scarpia. They represent more than just Scarpia’s bestial nature, however. Elsewhere heard as Angelotti flees his political imprisonment to hide in a church, as well as when the curtain rises to reveal the interior of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, the chords also come to represent what Scarpia himself stands for—the repressive relationship between Church and State.

FUN FACT

The famous leap at the end of the opera, in which Tosca takes her own life rather than be pursued by Scarpia’s henchmen, nearly never happened. Though an integral part of the ending of Sardou’s play—and an ending that grievously led to a leg injury and amputation for actress Sarah Bernhardt—the original adaptation that Luigi Illica presented ended with Tosca holding Cavaradossi’s lifeless body. In something of a “mad scene,” Tosca was meant to hallucinate that she and Cavaradossi were floating away on a gondola. Puccini visited Sardou shortly after they received that initial draft, and the two of them agreed to reject the changes and reinstate the heroine’s final act of defiance.

Sarah Bernhardt as Floria Tosca in Sardou's play La Tosca

CAST & CREATIVE

CAST (in order of vocal appearance)

Angelotti

Sacristan

Mario Cavaradossi

Floria Tosca

Baron Scarpia

Spoletta

Sciarrone

A Young Shepherd

Jailer

Daniel Noyola ‡

Nicholas Newton ‡

Jonathan Tetelman *

Tamara Wilson ‡

Rod Gilfry

Matthew Grills *

Luke Sutliff †

Lynn Gissel/ Brenda Harvey-Traylor/

Nancy Haywood Fellow

Peter Theurer

Cory McGee †

Beth Madison Fellow

CREATIVE TEAM

Conductor

Director

Set and Costume Designer

Original Lighting Designer

Associate Lighting Designer

Intimacy and Fight Director

Chorus Director

Children's Chorus Director

Musical Preparation

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Supertitles called by Luisana Rivas.

Stage Manager

Assistant Director

English Subtitles

* Houston Grand Opera mainstage debut

† Houston Grand Opera Studio artist

‡ Former Houston Grand Opera Studio artist

Benjamin Manis

John Caird

Bunny Christie

Duane Schuler

Michael James Clark

Adam Noble

Richard Bado ‡

Sarah and Ernest Butler

Chorus Director Chair

Madeline Slettedahl *

Alex Amsel

Michelle Papenfuss †

Dr. Saúl and Ursula Balagura/ Dr.

Laura E. Sulak and Dr. Richard W.

Brown Fellow

Bin Yu Sanford †

Lynn Des Prez/ Stephanie Larsen / Dr. and Mrs. Miguel Miro-Quesada

Fellow

Madeline Slettedahl

Annie Wheeler

Stephanie Smith

Scott F. Heumann, adapted by Jeremy Johnson

Performing artists, stage directors, and choreographers are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO, the union for opera professionals in the United States.

Scenic, costume, and lighting designers and assistant designers are represented by United Scenic Artists, IATSE Local USA-829. Orchestral musicians are represented by the Houston Professional Musicians Association, Local #65-699, American Federation of Musicians. Stage crew personnel provided by IATSE, Local #51.

Wardrobe personnel provided by Theatrical Wardrobe Union, Local #896. This production is being recorded for archival purposes.

SYNOPSIS

Italy has long been under the domination of the Hapsburg dynasty. Napoleon Bonaparte, however, has emerged as a threat to the status quo and Rome is in chaos, without a clear ruler. Baron Scarpia, the chief of police, has become the highest authority. Loyal to the king and queen of Naples, Scarpia seeks to eliminate any remaining trace of Napoleon’s attempts to establish a secular Roman Republic.

ACT I

The Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle Cesare Angelotti, a Republican, has just escaped from the Castel Sant’Angelo, where he had been imprisoned by Scarpia. Angelotti’s sister, the Marchesa Attavanti, has hidden a disguise for him in the church, where the painter Mario Cavaradossi is working on a painting of Mary Magdalene with the begrudging help of the Sacristan. Cavaradossi takes as his inspiration both the marchesa, whom he has recently seen at prayer, and his beloved Floria Tosca, a prominent opera singer. Cavaradossi recognizes Angelotti and promises to help him escape, but is surprised by a visit from Tosca. Angelotti hides while Cavaradossi attempts a quick conversation with Tosca. She is instantly suspicious of Cavaradossi’s cautious behavior and jealous of the woman she sees represented in his painting. Cavaradossi assuages her fears, and they make plans to spend the evening together. No sooner has Tosca gone than a cannon shot signals that Angelotti’s escape has been discovered. Cavaradossi and Angelotti depart immediately for Cavaradossi’s villa.

The Sacristan returns with news of Napoleon’s defeat by the Austrians. Arrangements have been made for an immediate Festival Te Deum and a concert at the Palazzo Farnese featuring Floria Tosca. Baron Scarpia, who has come in search of Angelotti, interrupts the preparations. Scarpia and his spies find an empty basket of food and a woman’s fan bearing the Attavanti family crest. When Tosca returns to see Cavaradossi, her jealousy is again aroused by his absence. Scarpia preys on her suspicions by showing her the marchesa’s fan. When she leaves, Scarpia orders his agent Spoletta to follow her. As the congregation assembles for the Te Deum, Scarpia plans to eliminate Cavaradossi and possess Tosca for himself.

INTERMISSION ACT II

Baron Scarpia’s apartment at the Palazzo Farnese Scarpia relishes his plan to execute the traitors and seduce Tosca. When Cavaradossi is brought for questioning, the painter denies any knowledge of Angelotti’s location. At Scarpia’s request, Tosca arrives from the victory celebrations. Cavaradossi is then taken into an adjoining room and tortured. His agonized cries force Tosca to divulge Angelotti’s hiding place—the well in the garden of Cavaradossi’s villa. The tortures cease; Tosca and Cavaradossi are briefly reunited before Scarpia orders Spoletta

to Angelotti’s hiding place. As Cavaradossi denounces Tosca for her betrayal, news arrives that Napoleon has defeated the Austrians at Marengo. Cavaradossi predicts greater and greater victory for the Republicans, and Scarpia orders him taken away for execution. When Tosca pleads for mercy, Scarpia makes his price clear: she can buy Cavaradossi’s life by giving herself to Scarpia. She agrees. Since Scarpia has ordered Cavaradossi’s death, a mock execution must be arranged, and Scarpia seems to give this order to Spoletta. Tosca makes one further request: a warrant of safe passage so that she and Cavaradossi can leave the country. This done, Scarpia advances to embrace her, and she stabs him to death.

INTERMISSION ACT III

The Roof of the Castel Sant’Angelo

The distant song of a passing young shepherd and church bells signal the approaching dawn. Cavaradossi is brought into the castle yard to prepare for his death, and his thoughts turn to Tosca. He is attempting to write a final letter to her when she appears. She shows him the warrant of safe passage, explains the mock execution, and describes how she killed Scarpia. Tosca and Cavaradossi dream of their future happiness together. As the soldiers assemble for the execution, Tosca instructs Cavaradossi to feign his death and remain motionless until she can confirm it is safe to leave. After the soldiers depart, she discovers she has been betrayed: Cavaradossi is dead. Spoletta and his men try to arrest Tosca for the murder of Scarpia, but she is too quick for them. Vowing to confront Scarpia before God, she takes her own life.

—John Caird, Director

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

HGO previously presented Tosca in the 1956-57, 1965-66, 1971-72, 1977-78, 1983-84, 1990-91, 1996-97, 2003-04, 2009-10, and 201516 seasons.

HGO ORCHESTRA

Patrick Summers, Artistic and Music Director

Sarah and Ernest Butler Chair

VIOLIN

Denise Tarrant*, Concertmaster

Sarah and Ernest Butler Concertmaster Chair

Chloe Kim*, Assistant Concertmaster

Natalie Gaynor*, Principal Second Violin

Carrie Kauk*, Assistant Principal Second Violin

Miriam Belyatsky*

Anabel Detrick*

Rasa Kalesnykaite*

Hae-a Lee-Barnes*

Chavdar Parashkevov*

Mary Reed*

Erica Robinson*

Linda Sanders*

Oleg Sulyga*

Sylvia VerMeulen*

Melissa Williams*

Andres Gonzalez

Kana Kimura

Emily Madonia

Mila Neal

Patricia Quintero Garcia

Jacob Schafer

Rachel Shepard

VIOLA

Eliseo Rene Salazar*, Principal

Lorento Golofeev*, Assistant Principal

Gayle Garcia-Shepard*

Erika C. Lawson*

Suzanne LeFevre†

Dawson White†

Matthew Carrington

Elizabeth Golofeev

Sergein Yap

Matthew Weathers

CELLO

Barrett Sills*, Principal

Erika Johnson*, Assistant Principal

Ariana Nelson†

Wendy Smith-Butler*

Steven Wiggs*

Shino Hayashi

Kristiana Ignatjeva

DOUBLE BASS

Dennis Whittaker*, Principal

Erik Gronfor*, Assistant Principal

Carla Clark*

Paul Ellison

FLUTE

Henry Williford*, Principal

Tyler Martin*

Izumi Miyahara

OBOE

Elizabeth Priestly Siffert*, Principal

Mayu Isom*

Spring Hill

CLARINET

Sean Krissman†, Principal

Ran Kampel, Acting Principal

Eric Chi*

Molly Mayfield

BASSOON

Amanda Swain*, Principal

Michael Allard†

Micah Doherty

Samuel Rhoton

HORN

Sarah Cranston*, Principal

Kimberly Penrod Minson*

Spencer Park†

Kevin McIntyre

Gavin Reed

TRUMPET

Tetsuya Lawson*, Principal

Randal Adams*

Daniel Egan

TROMBONE

Thomas Hultén*, Principal

Mark Holley*

Justin Bain†

Ben Osborne

CIMBASSO

Mark Barton*, Principal

TIMPANI

Alison Chang*, Principal

PERCUSSION

Christina Carroll

Craig Hauschildt

HARP

Joan Eidman*, Principal

ORGAN/CELESTA

Thomas Marvil

BANDA

Richard Brown*, Principal, Percussion

Karen Slotter, Percussion

ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL MANAGER

Richard Brown*

* HGO Orchestra core musician

† HGO Orchestra core musician on leave this production

HGO CHORUS HGO CHILDREN'S CHORUS

Richard Bado, Chorus Director

Sarah and Ernest Butler Chorus Director Chair

Nathan Abbott

Ofelia Adame

Preston Andrews

Sarah Bannon

Megan Berti

Christopher Childress

Esteban G. Cordero Pérez

Robert Dee

Callie Denbigh

Stacia Morgan Dunn

Ashly Evans

Dallas Gray

EJ Grayson

Tabitha Greene

Sarah Jane Hardin

Frankie Hickman

Austin Hoeltzel

Julie Hoeltzel

Joe Key

Aarianna Longino

Alejandro Magallón

Heath Martin

Antonio Martinez

Katherine McDaniel

Jeff Monette

Natasha Monette

Patrick Perez

Abby Powell

Saïd Henry Pressley

Nicholas Rathgeb

Brad Raymond

Gabrielle Reed

Kendall Reimer

Christina Rigg

Francis Rivera

Hannah Roberts

Johnny Salvesen

Hillary Schranze

Kaitlyn Stavinoha

Miles Ward

Madeline Slettedahl, Children’s Chorus Director

Benjamin Armstrong

Camille Atanu

Olivia Atanu

Emma Cranston

Ashlynn Ann Ellsworth

Abby Frankel

Elizabeth Garcia

Jaxson Holemlin

Lila Johnson

Evelyn Markgraf

Liam Norton

Dante Petrozzi

Gabrielle Sebello

Ella Theurer

Peter Theurer

SUPERNUMERARIES

Jason Carmichael

Alessandro Di Bagno

Kartez Jackson

Brian Mitchell

Patrick Moss

Calvin Peng-Bulger

Roberto J. Reyna

Tyler Rooney

Samuel V. Stengler

Jack Teatsworth

Scott C. Thornton

Brian Tighe

WHO'S WHO

BENJAMIN MANIS (UNITED STATES) CONDUCTOR

Benjamin Manis, who was recently named associate conductor of Utah Symphony, returns to HGO after serving as the company’s resident conductor from 2019 through spring 2022. This season for HGO, he also conducted El Milagro del Recuerdo/The Miracle of Remembering. Last season for the company, he conducted performances of Carmen, The Snowy Day, and Romeo and Juliet. Other recent engagements at HGO include Rigoletto, the 2020 world premiere of Marian’s Song, and the subsequent HGO Digital filmed version and Miller Outdoor Theatre performances of the same work. Manis has served as cover conductor for the St. Louis and Dallas Symphonies, working with conductors David Robertson and Stéphane Denève, and was a winner of the 2019 Solti Foundation U.S. Career Assistance Award. Winner of the Aspen Conducting Prize, he returned to the Aspen Music Festival in summer 2021 for the fourth consecutive year. Manis has a Master of Music degree from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music.

JOHN CAIRD (UNITED KINGDOM)

DIRECTOR

Tony Award-winning director John Caird is an Honorary Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Principal Guest Director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm, and a freelance writer and director of plays, musicals, and operas. His previous work at HGO includes directing and writing the libretto for two company world premieres: Tarik O’Regan’s The Phoenix (2019) and André Previn’s Brief Encounter (2009). Also for HGO, he previously directed this production of Tosca (2015, 2010), La bohème (2018, 2012), and Don Carlos (2012). His recent directorial credits include his own adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film Spirited Away in Tokyo; Estella Scrooge in New York; A Knights’ Tale, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night, all in Tokyo; Don Giovanni at Welsh National Opera; McQueen at the Haymarket Theatre; this production of Tosca in Chicago and LA; Love’s Labour’s Lost at the Stratford Festival in Canada; La bohème in San Francisco and Toronto, Parsifal in Chicago; and his own musical, Daddy Long Legs, off-Broadway, in Tokyo, and across the U.S. His many National Theatre productions include his own Olivier-award winning version of Bernstein’s Candide, now playing in multiple productions worldwide. His directorial work for the RSC included over 20 productions, including Nicholas Nickleby and Les Misérables, both of which have won numerous awards in the West End, Broadway, and all around the world. At Dramaten in Stockholm he has directed Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dance of Death, The Tempest, Twelfth Night, Gertrud, and Merry Wives of Windsor Theatre Craft, his book about directing plays and musicals, is published by Faber and Faber.

BUNNY CHRISTIE (UNITED KINGDOM) SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER

Bunny Christie is a London-based, international award-winning production designer. Her designs were seen previously at HGO in the 2009 world premiere of André Previn’s Brief Encounter and in Tosca in 2010 and 2015. Other opera work includes Tosca for LA Opera and Medea for English National Opera and Geneva Grand Opera. She designed the set and costumes for Company (West End and Broadway), winning her fourth Olivier and second Tony Award, both for Best Set Design. Other theater work includes Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (National Theatre, West End, and Broadway; Olivier and Tony Awards for Best Set Design); People Places and Things (National Theatre, West End, New York, and touring); The White Guard and A Streetcar Named Desire (National Theatre, Olivier Awards for both); The Wild Duck and Ink (Almedia, also West End and New York, Evening Standard Best Design Award and Tony Award nomination); and the all-female Henry IV and Julius Caesar (Donmar Warehouse and St. Ann’s Warehouse, New York). Christie was awarded an OBE for services to the U.K. theater industry and an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Andrews University.

DUANE SCHULER (UNITED STATES) ORIGINAL LIGHTING DESIGNER

Duane Schuler’s work encompasses opera, ballet, and theater. For HGO, he has lit numerous productions since 1973, most recently Norma, this production of Tosca, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Fidelio, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Cavalleria rusticana & Pagliacci. Opera productions include Turandot, Lulu, and Lohengrin (La Scala); Pelleas et Melisande, Carmen, First Emperor, and Cendrillon (Metropolitan Opera); Elektra and Benvenuto Cellini (Salzburg Festival); Fidelio and Robert le diable (Covent Garden); Candide, Jenůfa, and The Marriage of Figaro (Santa Fe Opera); and Norma, Cold Sassy Tree, Don Giovanni, Tosca, Samson and Delilah, and Otello (Lyric Opera of Chicago); as well as productions for LA Opera, San Francisco Opera, Seattle Opera, Netherlands Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Dallas Opera, and New York City Opera. Ballet credits include Swan Lake, The Snow Maiden, Pillar of Fire, and Of Love and Rage (American Ballet Theatre); The Sleeping Beauty (Stuttgart Ballet); Giselle (Deutsche Oper Ballet); and The Nutcracker (Houston Ballet). Theater credits include House and Garden (Manhattan Theatre Club), The Royal Family (Ahmanson Theatre), The Importance of Being Earnest (Broadway), and Ragtime (The 5th Ave Theatre). Schuler is also a founding partner of Schuler Shook, the theater planning and architectural lighting design firm.

MICHAEL JAMES CLARK (UNITED STATES)

ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER

Michael James Clark is the Head of Lighting and Production Media for HGO. This season for the

company, he also served as associate lighting designer for Werther and The Marriage of Figaro. Last season for the company, he created the lighting design for the world premiere production of The Snowy Day, and he served as the assistant lighting designer for The Magic Flute and associate lighting designer for Carmen. He served as revival lighting designer for HGO’s production of Aida (2020) and designed lighting for mainstage and Miller Outdoor Theatre productions of La bohème (201819) and the world premiere of The Phoenix (2019). He lit the HGO world premieres of Some Light Emerges (2017), After the Storm (2016), and O Columbia (2015), as well as Otello (2014); Die Fledermaus, Aida, and Il trovatore (2013); La bohème, La traviata, and The Rape of Lucretia (2012); The Marriage of Figaro (2011); the world premiere of Cruzar la Cara de la Luna/To Cross the Face of The Moon (2010); and numerous outdoor productions. Clark also has designed lighting for Teatro La Fenice, San Francisco Opera, the Canadian Opera Company, Stages Repertory Theatre, Theatre Under the Stars, and Rice University.

ADAM NOBLE (UNITED STATES) INTIMACY AND FIGHT DIRECTOR

Adam Noble is a movement specialist with over 25 years of experience in theater, opera, and film. He is the Movement Instructor for the Butler Studio, and this season serves as Intimacy and Fight Director for all HGO Brown Theater productions. He previously served as the company’s Fight Director for Julius Caesar (2018) and Rigoletto (2019), and as the Fight and Intimacy Director for Romeo and Juliet (2022), Carmen (2021), and Don Giovanni (2019). Notable credits include The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The Alley Theatre, Opera Carolina, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, Dayton Opera, the Public Theatre, and more. Noble is the co-founder and artistic director of the Dynamic Presence Project, a theater company focused on the revitalization and proliferation of movement theater and embodied physical storytelling. He teaches movement both nationally and internationally, and has choreographed the physicality, violence, and intimacy for well over 200 productions. As the Associate Professor of Acting & Movement at the University of Houston, he serves both the MFA and the BFA acting programs. He is also the resident Fight Director & Intimacy Coordinator for The Alley Theatre.

RICHARD BADO (UNITED STATES) CHORUS DIRECTOR

Sarah and Ernest Butler Chorus Director Chair

Butler Studio alumnus Richard Bado is director of artistic planning and chorus director at HGO. He made his professional conducting debut in 1989 leading HGO’s acclaimed production of Show Boat at the newly restored Cairo Opera House in Egypt. Since then, he has conducted for Houston Ballet, La Scala, Opéra national de Paris, New York City Opera, the Aspen Music Festival, Tulsa Opera, the Russian

National Orchestra, the Florida Philharmonic, the Montreal Symphony, and Wolf Trap Opera. This season he again conducted performances of The Nutcracker with the Houston Ballet. An accomplished pianist, Bado has appeared regularly with Renée Fleming in recital. He has also played for Cecilia Bartoli, Frederica von Stade, Susan Graham, Denyce Graves, Marcello Giordani, Ramón Vargas, Samuel Ramey, Jamie Barton, Ryan McKinny, and Michael Spyres. Bado holds music degrees from the Eastman School of Music, where he received the 2000 Alumni Achievement Award, and West Virginia University; he also studied advanced choral conducting with Robert Shaw. For 12 years, he was the director of the opera studies program at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He has also worked for the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, the Bolshoi Opera Young Artist Program, Opera Australia, Santa Fe Opera, and Opera Theater of St. Louis. He received HGO’s Silver Rose Award in 2013 in celebration of his 25th year as chorus master.

MADELINE SLETTEDAHL (UNITED STATES) CHILDREN’S CHORUS DIRECTOR

Madeline Slettedahl joined the HGO music staff in the 2021-22 season. Recent appointments include music staff work at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Wolf Trap Opera, and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, where she completed her young artist training as the pianist and ensemble coach for the Patrick G. & Shirley W. Ryan Opera Center. Additional fellowships include the Solti Accademia di Bel Canto (opera pianism and conducting with Jonathan Papp and Richard Bonynge), the Britten-Pears Young Artist Program (opera and art song with Anthony Pappano and Mark Padmore), The Song Continues with Marilyn Horne, and Renée Fleming’s SongStudio program at Carnegie Hall. Slettedahl also attended Music Academy of the West, where she won First Prize in the Marilyn Horne Song Competition. An avid song and chamber music recitalist, she has been featured in recital series such as Carnegie Hall Citywide, Chicago’s Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, the Collaborative Art Institute of Chicago’s Lieder Lounge, the Cincinnati Song Initiative Recital Series, the Bellingham Festival of Music, and Twickenham Fest. Upcoming projects include an album for Delos Records with risingstar tenor Eric Ferring, as well as an album collaboration and performances with baritone Will Liverman. Slettedahl holds degrees in Collaborative Piano and Piano Performance, from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University and Western Washington University, respectively.

TAMARA WILSON (UNITED STATES) SOPRANO—FLORIA TOSCA

Butler Studio alumna Tamara Wilson is making her role debut as Tosca. Her appearance in the role is generously underwritten by Elizabeth and Richard Husseini. She was seen most recently at HGO in the titular roles in Turandot (2022) and Aida (2020), and as Chrysothemis in Elektra (2018). Other HGO roles

include Leonora in Il trovatore (2013); Elisabeth de Valois in the five-act French Don Carlos (2012); Miss Jessel in The Turn of the Screw (2010); Konstanze in The Abduction from the Seraglio (2008); and Amelia in A Masked Ball (2007). She won first prize in HGO’s 2005 Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias. Wilson continues to garner international recognition for her interpretations of Verdi, Mozart, Strauss, and Wagner and is the recipient of the prestigious Richard Tucker Award. Other recent honors include an Olivier Award nomination and Grand Prize in the annual Francisco Viñas Competition held at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona. Highlights of her 2022-23 season include Elvira in Ernani with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Turandot with Dutch National Opera, and Elsa in Lohengin at The Metropolitan Opera. Her 2021-22 season included debuts at Teatro La Fenice for Fidelio, The Santa Fe Opera for Tristan und Isolde, and returns to the Bavarian State Opera for Ariadne auf Naxos, LA Opera for St. Matthew Passion, and The Cleveland Orchestra for Otello Other recent performances include returns to the Canadian Opera Company for her role debut as Turandot, Deutsche Oper Berlin for A Masked Ball, and Frankfurt Opera for Don Carlo, as well as a return to The Metropolitan Opera for Aida, Il trovatore at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Otello at the Canadian Opera Company, Ariadne auf Naxos at Teatro alla Scala, and Elektra with Zurich Opera.

JONATHAN TETELMAN (CHILE) TENOR—MARIO CAVARADOSSI

Jonathan Tetelman is making his HGO debut, and this season makes several exciting house and role debuts. He returns to the role of Alfredo in La traviata with San Francisco Opera, reprises Cavaradossi in Tosca with Deutsche Opera Berlin, makes his role and Vienna State Opera debut as Turiddu in Cavalleria rusticana, and debuts the role of Macduff in Macbeth for his first appearance at the Salzburg Festival. He also returns to Semperoper Dresden for Rodolfo in La bohéme, reprises his acclaimed performances of Paolo in Francesca da Rimini with Deutsche Oper Berlin, and sings further performances of Loris Ipanow in Fedora with Ópera Las Palmas. On the concert stage he returns to Verdi’s Requiem in debuts with both Houston Symphony Orchestra and Orchestre de Paris, and joins soprano Angela Gheorghiu in concerts in Brussels and Paris. Last season, Tetelman sang Stiffelio with Opéra national du Rhin, Jacopo Foscari alongside Plácido Domingo in I due Foscari with Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Loris Ipanow in Fedora with Frankfurt Opera, Cavaradossi in Tosca with Theater an der Wien, and starred as Rodolfo in an operatic film of La bohéme in a coproduction with Radiotelevisione italiana and Opera di Roma. He was born in Castro, Chile and grew up in central New Jersey.

ROD GILFRY (UNITED STATES) BARITONE—BARON SCARPIA

American baritone Rod Gilfry, two-time Grammy award nominee, singer, and actor, has performed in all of the world’s music capitals. Previously at HGO, he performed the roles of the Marquis de la Force in last season’s Dialogues of the

Carmelites and Mr. Gower/Mr. Potter in the 2016 world premiere of Heggie’s It’s a Wonderful Life. His most recent Grammy Award nomination was for his performance in the title role of Messiaen’s monumental opera Saint François d’Assise in Amsterdam. His discography of 28 audio and video recordings includes the DVD and CD of his one-man show My Heart is So Full of You With a 77-role repertoire, Gilfry sings music from the Baroque to that composed expressly for him. In recent seasons, he has originated the role of Walt Whitman in Matthew Aucoin’s Crossing in Boston, The Father in Aucoin’s Eurydice at Los Angeles Opera, Alfred Stieglitz in Kevin Puts’s The Brightness of Light opposite Renée Fleming, Claudius in Brett Dean’s Hamlet with Glyndebourne Festival, and David Lang’s solo opera the loser in New York City. He recently returned to the Metropolitan Opera as Claudius in Brett Dean’s Hamlet and originated the role of Robert McNamara in the world premiere of Huang Ruo’s and David Henry Hwang’s Written in Stone at Washington National Opera. In addition, he and Renée Fleming reprised The Brightness of Light with Los Angeles Opera, the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He also sang Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the San Francisco Symphony. Gilfry is an Associate Professor of Vocal Arts at the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.

NICHOLAS NEWTON (UNITED STATES) BASS-BARITONE—SACRISTAN

This season for HGO, Butler Studio alumnus Nicholas Newton also performs in Salome as Second Soldier. Previously for HGO, Newton performed the role of Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet (2022), Daddy/Tim in the world premiere of The Snowy Day (2021), Billy King in performances of Marian’s Song at Miller Outdoor Theatre (2021) and in the opera’s world premiere (2020), and Monterone in Rigoletto (2019). During the 2020-21 HGO Digital season, he performed in The Making of The Snowy Day, an Opera for All and Giving Voice. He is the third prize winner in HGO’s 2019 Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias and an alumnus of HGO’s Young Artists Vocal Academy (2016). During the 2022-23 season, Newton’s engagements include a Dallas Opera debut as Monterone in Rigoletto, a Detroit Opera debut in Handel’s Xerxes, and a return to the Lyric Opera of Chicago to cover the role of Peter in Hansel and Gretel. Last season Newton made a Santa Fe Opera debut as Don Basilio in The Barber of Seville and joined the roster of the Metropolitan Opera to cover the role of Garibaldo in Rodelinda His 2020-21 season included the roles of Colline in La bohème and Judge Turpin in Sweeney Todd with Wolf Trap Opera, Monterone in Rigoletto with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and both Olin Blitch in Susannah and Achilla in Julius Caesar at Rice University. Newton is also an avid concert performer and recitalist. He is a co-founder of the in-progress Black Opera Database, a resource created to archive, celebrate, and preserve the vocal compositional output of Black composers and works that chronicle the Black experience. A 2021 Sullivan Award-winner, he earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance from San Diego State University and his Master of Music degree in Vocal Performance from Rice University.

DANIEL NOYOLA (MEXICO) BASS—ANGELOTTI

Butler Studio alumnus Daniel Noyola originated the role of Laurentino in the world premiere of El Milagro del Recuerdo/The Miracle of Remembering in 2019, and performed as Count Ceprano in Rigoletto (2019), Masetto in Don Giovanni (2019), and Colline La bohème (2018). This season with HGO, he also will perform the role of First Soldier in Salome Noyola is an ensemble member at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich, where he has appeared as Pistola in Falstaff, Zuniga in Carmen, Hobson in Peter Grimes, and Truffaldino in Ariadne auf Naxos, among other roles. In 2018 he graduated from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, where he appeared as the title role in Don Giovanni, Ferrando in Il trovatore, Don Alfonso in Così fan tutte, and Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor. Previous engagements have included Mustafà in The Italian Girl in Algiers with Tri-Cities Opera in New York; Dulcamara in The Elixir of Love with Sociedad Artística Sinaloense in Mexico; Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro with Oberlin in Italy; Uberto in La Serva Padrona and Luka in The Bear with the Merola Opera Program at San Francisco Opera; and the roles of Scapin and Der Lautsprecher in a double bill of L’île de Merlin and Der Kaiser von Atlantis at Wolf Trap Opera.

MATTHEW GRILLS (UNITED STATES) TENOR—SPOLETTA

Matthew Grills is making his HGO debut. This season with the company, he also appears as First Jew in Salome His recent performances include Ramiro in La Cenerentola and Almaviva in The Barber of Seville (Seattle Opera), Goro in Madame Butterfly (Metropolitan Opera), Snout in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Santa Fe Opera), Tobias Ragg in Sweeney Todd (San Francisco Opera), Idreno in Semiramide (Opéra national de Lorraine), Nemorino in The Elixir of Love (Portland Opera, Gyeonggi Philharmonic Orchestra— Seoul, Korea), and Ernesto in Don Pasquale (Opera Santa Barbara, Berkshire Opera Festival). Grills has sung Pedrillo in The Abduction from the Seraglio with New Orleans Opera and Atlanta Opera as well as Belmonte in the same work with Opera San José. He is a previous member of the ensemble of the Bavarian State Opera, where he sang roles that include his first performances of Pedrillo in The Abduction from the Seraglio and Brighella in Ariadne auf Naxos, as well as in new productions as Kedril in From the House of the Dead, Danieli in Les vêpres siciliennes, and Vierter Knappe in Parsifal. On the concert stage, his performances include Orff’s Carmina Burana (Houston Symphony), Handel’s Messiah (Hartford Symphony Orchestra), and the Voice of God in Weill’s The Promise (MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra).

LUKE SUTLIFF (UNITED STATES) BARITONE—SCIARRONE

Lynn Gissel/ Mrs. Brenda Harvey-Traylor/ Nancy Haywood Fellow

A second-year Butler Studio artist from Littleton, Colorado, Luke Sutliff holds a Master of Music

degree from Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He was recently awarded a 2022 Sara Tucker Study Grant. Other HGO roles for 2022-23 include Harvey in The Wreckers, Brühlmann in Werther, and a Cappadocian in Salome. For HGO’s 2021-22 season, his roles included El Dancairo in Carmen, M. Javelinot / Thierry in Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Mercutio in alternate cast and outdoor performances of Romeo and Juliet. At the Shepherd School, he appeared as Kaiser Overall in Der Kaiser von Atlantis and Johannes Zegner in Proving Up. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the Juilliard School, where he studied with the late Sanford Sylvan and made his Alice Tully Hall debut performing Fauré’s L’horizon chimérique. Sutliff previously performed the roles of Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Belcore in The Elixir of Love at the Chautauqua Institute. Sutliff joined Santa Fe Opera as an Apprentice Artist for summer 2021, covering the role of Jon Seward in The Lord of Cries and performing Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He returned to Santa Fe in 2022 to cover the role of Figaro in The Barber of Seville and perform El Dancairo in Carmen, and will go back again in summer 2023 to cover the title role in Pelleas et Melisande

CORY MCGEE (UNITED STATES)

BASS—JAILER

Beth Madison Fellow

A third-year Butler Studio artist from Stafford, Virginia, Cory McGee completed his Master of Music degree at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music. He was the second prize winner in HGO’s 2020 Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias. Other HGO roles for 2022-23 include Doctor Grenvil in La traviata, Johann in Werther, and Fifth Jew in Salome. He was also a soloist in 2023's Giving Voice. During the 2021-22 HGO season, he performed the role of Billy in The Snowy Day, and during the 2020-21 HGO Digital season he appeared in The Making of The Snowy Day, an Opera for All as Billy, and in Giving Voice. In summer 2019, he joined Santa Fe Opera as an apprentice artist, portraying the role of the Gardener in Ruder’s The Thirteenth Child. He returned to Santa Fe in summer 2021 as an apprentice artist for the second time, performing the role of Theseus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and recently debuted the role of Colline in La bohème at Detroit Opera. In summer 2022, he sang the role of Caspar in Der Freischütz with Wolf Trap Opera. He will return to Wolf Trap Opera this summer to perform the title role in Don Giovanni

PETER THEURER (UNITED STATES) TREBLE—YOUNG SHEPHERD

Peter Theurer made his HGO mainstage debut this season as Karl in Werther. He is a rising talent in Houston’s performing arts scene. Recent highlights include performing in the Children’s Chorus for HGO’s Turandot and as Turkey Boy in the Alley Theatre’s A Christmas Carol. He also recently performed the role of Joe in Street Scene with the Rice University Shepherd School Opera, and was a featured soloist in Houston Symphony’s 2021 Very Merry Pops Concert.

FESTIVAL

JUNE 17 - JULY 22, 2023

KINDER HSPVA, DOWNTOWN HOUSTON

Intensive music-making experiences and camaraderie for 3rd through 12th grade composers, instrumentalists, pianists, and vocalists.

AUDIENCE WARNING: SALOME CONTAINS ADULT CONTENT AND IS NOT SUITABLE FOR ALL AUDIENCES.

MUSIC BY RICHARD STRA USS

LIBRETTO BY HED WIG LACHMANN, BASED ON THE PLAY BY OSCAR WILDE

SUNG IN GERMAN WITH PROJECTED ENGLISH TRANSLATION

An Opera in One Act

The performance lasts approximately 1 hour and 47 minutes.

A production of Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía de Valencia.

The activities of Houston Grand Opera are supported in part by funds provided by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Quick Start Guide

THE OPERA IN ONE SENTENCE

Herod Antipas’s stepdaughter Salome becomes infatuated with his prisoner Jokanaan (John the Baptist), but when Jokanaan refuses her advances and Herod promises her anything in exchange for a dance, Salome demands—and gets—the prophet’s death.

BACKGROUND

Famous Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde tried his hand in the literary aesthetic of French symbolism with his 1891 play Salome, a hyper-sexualized distortion of the biblical story of Herod Antipas and the execution of John the Baptist. Salome is not named in the Bible, but, for centuries, Herod’s step-daughter had become a warning against the “dangers of female sexuality.” By the 19th century, Salome’s iconography shifted from a warning to a cultural exploration of sexuality. Partially inspired by a painting of Salome originally thought to be by Leonardo Da Vinci, Wilde said of that depiction, “Her lips in Leonardo’s painting disclose the cruelty of her soul. Her lust must be infinite, and her perversity without limits.” Richard Strauss saw the Wilde play in a German translation by Hedwig Lachmann, and he used that text as the basis for his libretto.

WHAT TO LISTEN FOR

The final few minutes of Strauss’s score contain one of the most intriguing and most exciting chords in the classical music canon, one that is still talked about in conservatory music theory classes for its innovation and the historic consternation it caused. When Salome finishes singing “Ich habe deinen Mund geküsst, Jokanaan”—I have kissed

your mouth, Jokanaan—the orchestra swells to a musical harmony that shocks, offends, and beguiles. The chord is characterized by its “polytonality,” or the layering of multiple different tonal chords on top of one another. The result is a dissonant, uncomfortable moment of sexual perverseness—the perfect aural representation of Salome’s necrophilic act.

When Salome first premiered in 1905, the opera scandalized much of Europe—it was censored in Vienna and banned in London, but it played to great public acclaim in Germany. The critics were offended not only by the perceived blasphemous content, but by Strauss’s complex harmonic language that added fuel to the fire. The “Salome chord” was seized upon by contemporaneous writers as evidence of the opera’s profanity: it was described as “the quintessence of decadence,” “ecstasy falling in upon itself,” “[a] spasm too intense to last more than a moment,” and “the epoch-making dissonance with which Strauss takes Salome to the depth of degradation.”

FUN FACT

The legendary Al Pacino saw a great deal of Oscar Wilde’s personality in the character of Herod. In 2011, he staged performances of the play in English, which he directed and starred in as Herod, opposite Jessica Chastain as Salome. He directed a documentary-drama of the making of that play in a movie titled Wilde Salomé, in which viewers get an in-depth look at Pacino’s directorial style and theoretical concepts of the Wilde drama. Since Strauss adapted his libretto directly from the German translation of Wilde’s play, the documentary of the English translation of the play contains line-for-line scenes depicted in the opera as well.

The story continues to captivate modern audiences.

CAST & CREATIVE

CAST (in order of vocal appearance)

Narraboth

Eric Taylor †

Drs. Rachel and Warren A. Ellsworth

IV/ Sharon Ley Lietzow and Robert

Lietzow/ Jill and Allyn Risley Fellow

CREATIVE TEAM

Conductor

Director

Associate Director

Keri-Lynn Wilson *

Francisco Negrin *

Angela Kleopatra Saroglou *

Page of Herodias

First Soldier

Second Soldier

Jokanaan

A Cappadocian

Salome

A Slave

Herod

Herodias

First Jew

Second Jew

Third Jew

Erin Wagner †

Amy and Mark Melton/ Drs. Liz

Grimm and Jack Roth Fellow

Daniel Noyola ‡

Nicholas Newton ‡

Ryan McKinny ‡

Luke Sutliff †

Lynn Gissel/ Brenda Harvey-Traylor/ Nancy Haywood Fellow

Laura Wilde *

Meryl Dominguez *†

Mr. and Mrs. Harlan C. Stai Fellow

Chad Shelton ‡

Karita Mattila

Matthew Grills

Rafael Moras

Ricardo Garcia †

Michelle Beale and Dick Anderson/ Dr. Ellen R. Gritz and Mr. Milton D. Rosenau Jr. Fellow

Set and Costume Designer Louis Désiré *

Lighting Designer

Bruno Poet

Projection/Video Designer Joan Rodón *

Intimacy and Fight Director

Adam Noble

German Diction Coach Anja Burmeister *

Musical Preparation

Alex Amsel

Kirill Kuzmin ‡

Peter Pasztor ‡

Maureen Zoltek *

Stage Manager

Brian August

Assistant Director Colter Schoenfish

* Houston Grand Opera mainstage debut

† Houston Grand Opera Studio artist

‡ Former Houston Grand Opera Studio artist

Fourth Jew

Fifth Jew

First Nazarene

Second Nazarene

Christopher Bozeka ‡

Cory McGee † Beth Madison Fellow

William Guanbo Su ‡

Navasard Hakobyan †

Melinda and Bill Brunger/

Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Nickson/ Gloria M. Portela Fellow

PRODUCTION CREDITS

English supertitles by Jeremy Johnson. Supertitles called by Emily Kern. Performing artists, stage directors, and choreographers are represented by the American Guild of Musical Artists, AFL-CIO, the union for opera professionals in the United States.

Scenic, costume, and lighting designers and assistant designers are represented by United Scenic Artists, IATSE Local USA-829. Orchestral musicians are represented by the Houston Professional Musicians Association, Local #65-699, American Federation of Musicians. Stage crew personnel provided by IATSE, Local #51.

Wardrobe personnel provided by Theatrical Wardrobe Union, Local #896. This production is being recorded for archival purposes.

ACT I

At the palace of Herod Antipas of Judea, soldiers are on guard as the Tetrarch entertains within the banquet hall. Narraboth, Captain of the Guard, speaks with the page of Herodias about his deep infatuation with the beautiful Princess Salome. The page, comparing the princess with the moonlit night, warns Narraboth of the dangers and futility of his love.

Salome, bored with the excesses of the banquet and the persistent attentions of her stepfather, appears on the terrace, and is intrigued by the strange voice coming from a cell. The voice is that of Jokanaan, an imprisoned prophet who has been preaching against Herod for marrying his brother's wife, Herodias. Jokanaan condemns her as a murderous adulteress. Curious to see him, Salome asks that he be brought up from the cell. Narraboth, unable to resist her persuasion, does as she asks, against Herod's orders.

Jokanaan comes into the open, continuing his denunciation of the Tetrarch's wife and the court. Salome is immediately and completely overcome with desire for him, but her advances are repulsed. Jokanaan compares her unfavorably with her wicked mother Herodias, and counsels her to seek out the Lord and ask forgiveness for her sins. She becomes even more infatuated and stubbornly begs to kiss him, but the prophet refuses to let her touch him. Narraboth, realizing that he will never be regarded as more than a servant, kills himself. Jokanaan curses Salome and returns to his cell.

Herod, Herodias, and their company enter the terrace. The dissolute Herod is full of personal and political fears, torn between his desire for Salome and his constant reading of ill omens and signs. He is further disturbed by the discovery of the body of the guard, but he turns his attention back to Salome. To soothe his tormented soul, he asks Salome to drink from his cup, and to show some sign of interest in him. She refuses.

An argument ensues between the Tetrarch and his wife, who is jealous and derisive of his obvious attraction to her daughter. The disagreement climaxes as Jokanaan's voice again rises in denunciation of Herodias, who berates Herod for leaving the prophet unpunished.

Again, the voice of the prisoner is heard foretelling the coming of the Savior. When Herod asks who the Savior might be, the Jews and Nazarenes become involved in a religious debate; he is told by the Nazarenes that the Savior has already come and that he has raised the dead and performed other miracles.

With dread of someone who raises the dead added to his troubles, Herod asks Salome to dance, hoping to be distracted from his ominous forebodings. Salome refuses until Herod promises to grant anything she might ask if she will only dance. Inspired with an evil thought, she performs the seductive Dance of the Seven Veils.

When the dance ends, she throws herself at Herod's feet and demands the head of Jokanaan brought to her on a silver platter. Herod, terrified of harming a holy man that he fears, offers her instead all his jewels and riches—anything but what she asks. But Salome insists that he keep his promise.

On receiving the head, Salome is transported into a sexual frenzy, speaking to Jokanaan’s head and finally fulfilling her frustrated lust by kissing the mouth she had been denied. Herod, horrified, orders her to be killed by the soldiers.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY

HGO previously presented Salome in the 1955-56, 1968-69, 1976-77, 1986-87, and 1996-97 seasons.

HGO ORCHESTRA

Patrick Summers, Artistic and Music Director

Sarah and Ernest Butler Chair

VIOLIN

Denise Tarrant*, Concertmaster

Sarah and Ernest Butler Concertmaster Chair

Chloe Kim*, Assistant Concertmaster

Natalie Gaynor*, Principal Second Violin

Carrie Kauk†, Assistant Principal Second Violin

Oleg Sulyga*, Acting Assistant Principal

Second Violin

Miriam Belyatsky*

Anabel Detrick*

Rasa Kalesnykaite†

Hae-a Lee-Barnes*

Chavdar Parashkevov*

Mary Reed*

Erica Robinson†

Linda Sanders*

Sylvia VerMeulen*

Melissa Williams*

Zubaida Azezi

Lindsey Baggett

Eugeniu Cheremoush

Andres Gonzalez

Kana Kimura

Fiona Lofthouse

Emily Madonia

Mila Neal

Sean O'Neal

Patricia Quintero Garcia

Jacob Schafer

Rachel Shepard

Trung Trinh

Hannah Watson

VIOLA

Eliseo Rene Salazar*, Principal

Lorento Golofeev*, Assistant Principal

Gayle Garcia-Shepard†

Erika C. Lawson*

Suzanne LeFevre†

Dawson White†

Matthew Carrington

Nicholas Lindell

Sarah Mason

Conor McAvinue

Sergein Yap

Amber Archibald-Sešek

Matthew Weathers

CELLO

Barrett Sills*, Principal

Erika Johnson*, Assistant Principal

Ariana Nelson†

Wendy Smith-Butler*

Steven Wiggs*

David Dietz

Shino Hayashi

Simon Housner

Kristiana Ignatjeva

DOUBLE BASS

Dennis Whittaker*, Principal

Erik Gronfor*, Assistant Principal

Carla Clark*

Hunter Capoccioni

Deborah Dunham

Paul Ellison

FLUTE

Henry Williford*, Principal

Tyler Martin*

Izumi Miyahara

OBOE

Elizabeth Priestly Siffert*, Principal

Mayu Isom*

Spring Hill

CLARINET

Sean Krissman†, Principal

Ran Kampel, Acting Principal

Eric Chi*

Justin Best

Molly Mayfield

BASSOON

Amanda Swain*, Principal

Michael Allard†

Micah Doherty

Samuel Rhoton

FRENCH HORN

Sarah Cranston*, Principal

Kimberly Penrod Minson*

Spencer Park†

Jamie Leff

Kevin McIntyre

Gavin Reed

TRUMPET

Tetsuya Lawson*, Principal

Randal Adams*

Daniel Egan

TROMBONE

Thomas Hultén*, Principal

Mark Holley*

Justin Bain†

Ben Osborne

TUBA

Mark Barton*, Principal

TIMPANI

Alison Chang*, Principal

PERCUSSION

Richard Brown*, Principal

Christina Carroll

Craig Hauschildt

Robert McCullagh

Karen Slotter

HARP

Joan Eidman*, Principal

CELESTA

Kirill Kuzmin

ORCHESTRA PERSONNEL MANAGER

Richard Brown*

* HGO Orchestra core musician

† HGO Orchestra core musician on leave this production

SUPERNUMERARIES

Travis Ammons

Larissa Bither

Cole Bresnehen

Rachel Brownhill

Efren Calderon

Ted Doolittle

Chad Fontenot

WHO'S WHO

Sameer Garach

Hugo Garcia

Zach Keen

Adam Kral

Max Madof

Aili Maeve

Jeana Magallon

KERI-LYNN WILSON (CANADA) CONDUCTOR

Keri-Lynn Wilson is making her HGO debut. Her career as a conductor at the world’s leading opera houses and orchestras spans more than 20 years. This fall, Wilson made her Metropolitan Opera debut, conducting a rare revival of Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, followed by her Teatro Colón debut in Buenos Aires, conducting Tosca. In summer 2022, she had the idea to defend Ukraine through music, which led her to help form the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, an ensemble composed of leading Ukrainian musicians from inside the embattled country, as well as recent refugees and Ukrainian members of European orchestras. Wilson has led the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra across Europe and the United States, performing in Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Warsaw, the London Proms, the Edinburgh Festival, Dublin, Orange, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center. Wilson’s 2022-23 season includes her return to Covent Garden, conducting La traviata. Orchestral highlights include performances with Tokyo’s NHK Orchestra, the Hessische Staatsorchester Wiesbaden, the Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini in Parma, the Wrocław Philharmonic, Orchestre national Bordeaux Aquitaine, and the Lithuanian National Orchestra.

FRANCISCO NEGRIN (SPAIN) DIRECTOR

Francisco Negrin is making his HGO debut. He is a Barcelona-based, award-winning stage director who has worked with many of the major opera companies and festivals of Europe, America, and Australia, in addition to major events, film, popular music, and other media. Negrin has directed over 70 critically acclaimed productions in the leading opera houses around the globe, many of which have been televised and released on DVD. His opera work includes Handel’s Orlando for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; Salome in Valencia; Fidelio and Arabella at De Vlaamse Opera; Mitridate, Norma, Schoek’s Venus, and Ginastera’s Beatrix Cenci for the Grand Théâtre de Genève; La clemenza di Tito at Gran Teatre del Liceu; Die lustige Witwe in Leipzig; Idomeneo at the Aalto-Musiktheater, Essen; and Orphée at Royal Opera’s Linbury Theatre; among many other acclaimed productions. On the stages of the Royal Danish Opera he has presented The Cunning Little Vixen, Partenope, Giulio Cesare, Alcina, and the world

Jonathan Moody

Jessica Naylor

Mayuri Patel

Janine Rivers

Rahul Shah

Kelsey Stewart

Alexandra Szeto-Joe

John Wayne Tingley

Samantha Walker

Nick Ward

Christine Wehrli

Haroon Zuberi

premieres of both Poul Ruder’s The Trial and Hans Abrahamsen’s The Snow Queen. Engagements in North America include Handel’s Rinaldo at the Lyric Opera of Chicago; Werther in both San Francisco and Chicago; Agrippina and Alceste at the Santa Fe Festival; and Don Giovanni for both Glimmerglass and New York City Opera. Opera productions in the 202122 season included Il trovatore at LA Opera and a new staging of Nabucco at Oper im Steinbruch St. Margarethen.

ANGELA KLEOPATRA SAROGLOU (GREECE) ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR

Angela Kleopatra Saroglou is making her HGO debut. She studied at the School of Drama of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and since 1999 has worked as an assistant director for opera productions in Thessaloniki, at the Greek National Opera in Athens, and many opera houses in Europe. As a director she has staged Sauguet’s La Voyante, Galuppi’s L’amante di tutte, Carmen, and two contemporary chamber operas by Haris Vrondos for the Greek National Opera, as well as Handel’s Scipione for the Händel Festspiele in Bad Lauchstädt, Germany. She has directed scenic monologues from Schubert’s song cycles, Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, and recently did the dramaturgy and codirected The Marriage of Figaro for the Greek National Opera As a dramaturg, Saroglou has collaborated with Arnaud Bernard for Nabucco (Arena di Verona) and La fanciulla del West (Mariinsky Theater). She also studied singing in Greece and Italy and until 2007 pursued a career as a solo and chorus singer.

LOUIS DÉSIRÉ (FRANCE)  SET AND COSTUME DESIGNER

Director, scenic designer, and costume designer Louis Désiré, who is making his HGO debut, has participated in numerous opera productions in Europe, North America, and Asia. In September 2007, he made his debut at the Teatro Colòn in Buenos Aires directing and designing the sets and costumes for Werther Since then he has worked all over the world, on productions including Alceste (Santa Fe Opera); The Two Foscari (Teatro Colòn); Werther (San Francisco, Chicago, and Bilbao); Francesca da Rimini (Buenos Aires and Monte Carlo); Un ballo in maschera (Monte Carlo); Macbeth (Bilbao); La Cenerentola (Beijing and Metz); Carmen (Seoul and the Chorégies

d'Orange); Il trovatore (Macerata, Copenhagen, Madrid, Los Angeles); The Flying Dutchman (Buenos Aires); Alcina (Oslo and Copenhagen); La bohème (Montevideo); Mitridate (Drottningholm); and Tosca, La bohème, Luisa Miller, Guillaume Tell, and soon Les Huguenots, all in Marseille. He has worked with the Paris National Opera, Royal Theater of La Monnaie in Brussels, Amsterdam Opera, Royal Theater in Copenhagen, Teatro de la Maestranza in Seville, Festival of Santander, Festival of Perelada, Liceu de Barcelona, Palau de les Arts de Valencia, Leipzig Opera, Megaron of Athens and Tessaloniki, Festival del Centro Histórico de Mexico, New York City Opera, and more.

BRUNO POET (UNITED KINGDOM)

LIGHTING DESIGNER

Award-winning lighting designer Bruno Poet returns to HGO after designing lighting for Aida in 2020 and Don Giovanni in 2019. Other opera credits include The Hours (Metropolitan Opera); Nabucco (Steinbruch Festival, Austria); Alcina (Glyndebourne Opera); Rigoletto (Opera North); Carmen (Bregenz Festival); Aida (Grand Théâtre de Genève); Otello, Don Giovanni, and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Royal Opera House); Il trovatore (LA Opera); The Merry Widow (ENO); Akhnaten (ENO/LA Opera/ Metropolitan Opera); Carmen (ENO/Den Norske Opera); L’arbore di Diana (Gran Teatre del Liceu); Il trovatore and Das Liebesverbot (Teatro Real, Madrid); Die Dreigroschenoper (Theatre an der Wein); and Rinaldo (Lyric Opera, Chicago). Other credits include Pet Shop Boys: Dreamworld Tour (World Tour); Cinderella (Gillian Lynne Theatre); 50th National Day and 49th National Day (UAE); Sigur Rós (World Tours since 2012); Björk’s Cornucopia (The Shed, New York); Billie Eilish (Steve Jobs Theatre); Apollo 11 (US Tour); Miss Saigon (West End/Broadway); TINA: The Tina Turner Musical (Broadway/West End/Hamburg/Utrecht); Frankenstein (National Theatre); and The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Julius Caesar (Bridge Theatre).

JOAN RODÓN (SPAIN) PROJECTION/VIDEO DESIGNER

Joan Rodón is making his HGO debut. Rodón studied audiovisual production at the EMAV Academy in Barcelona. In 2000 he joined the theater company La Fura dels Baus as a video creator; his projects there included Metamorfosis, adapted from the Kafka, which premiered in Japan in 2005, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique at the Teatro Massimo in Palermo. In 2009 he began working with Francisco Negrin, first on L’Árbore di Diana for the Gran Teatre del Liceu, and then continuing the collaboration with Una Cosa Rara and Salome at the Palau de les Arts de València and Thaïs and Gerusalemme in Essen and Bonn. Rodón also provided designs for Iolanta at Opéra National du Lorraine, La Cuina de Rossini at Gran Teatre del Liceu, and Après Moi Le Déluge at Teatre Nacional de Catalunya. Other projects include creating the visual content

for the musicals My Fair Lady produced by Stage Entertainment, Cruz de Navajas produced by La Cuarta Fase Productions, and Company directed by Antonio Banderas and produced by Soho Caixabank Theatre.

ADAM NOBLE (UNITED STATES) INTIMACY AND FIGHT DIRECTOR

For information on Adam Noble, please see page 39.

LAURA WILDE (UNITED STATES) SOPRANO—SALOME

Soprano Laura Wilde, making her HGO debut, is a 2019 Richard Tucker Foundation career grant recipient. Her 2022-23 season includes a return to the Metropolitan Opera to sing Ellen Orford in Peter Grimes and a debut of the role of Floria Tosca at Arizona Opera. Highlights of recent seasons include the title role in Jenůfa with the Santa Fe Opera and English National Opera; Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte and Agathe in Der Freischütz at Staatstheater Stuttgart; the title role in Káťa Kabanová with the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma and Scottish Opera; Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte with Washington National Opera; Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni in a film produced by Seattle Opera; the Fifth Maid in Elektra at the Opéra national de Paris; Freia, Ortlinde, and the cover of Sieglinde in Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, respectively, part of David Pountney’s new Ring cycle at Lyric Opera of Chicago; Ortlinde for Act III of Die Walküre at the Los Angeles Philharmonic; Gretel at the Edinburgh Festival and Melbourne Symphony; Laura in Der Ring des Polykrates at The Dallas Opera; Micaëla in Carmen with Nashville Opera; Vitellia in La clemenza di Tito at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis; Jane Withersteen in the world premiere of Craig Bohmler’s Riders of the Purple Sage and Mamah Cheney in the world premiere of Daron Hagen’s Shining Brow, both at Arizona Opera; Donna Anna in Don Giovanni with the Berkshire Opera Festival; Freia and the Foreign Princess in Rusalka with Des Moines Metro Opera; and the cover role of Eva in Die Meistersinger with the Metropolitan Opera. Wilde’s numerous awards and honors include a 2018 Mabel Dorn Reeder Foundation Award from Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, a 2017 Sullivan Grant, and a 2016 Sara Tucker Study Grant from the Richard Tucker Foundation.

RYAN MCKINNY (UNITED STATES) BASS-BARITONE—JOKANAAN

Butler Studio alumnus Ryan McKinny has performed with HGO many times, including as the title role in Don Giovanni (2019); Gunther in Götterdämmerung (2017); and Donner in Das Rheingold, Escamillo in Carmen, and the title role in Rigoletto (all in 2014) This season McKinny returns to the Los

Angeles Opera in his role debut as Scarpia in Tosca, Seattle Opera as Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, and Los Angeles Philharmonic as Clarence in John Adam’s Girls of the Golden West. He will also take part in a world premiere by Jake Heggie and Gene Scheer for Music of Remembrance, which will be performed in Seattle, San Francisco, and Chicago. During the 2021-22 season McKinny performed as Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro with the Metropolitan Opera and Seattle Opera, joined pianist Kathleen Kelly for a recital at the Lied Center of Kansas, joined the Boston Symphony at Tanglewood as Don Giovanni, and performed as a soloist in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with The Philadelphia Orchestra at Saratoga Performing Arts Center. He has made additional appearances at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (Joseph De Rocher in Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, Don Giovanni); Metropolitan Opera (Biterolf in Tannhäuser, Speaker in The Magic Flute, Kothner in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, and Lieutenant Ratcliffe in Billy Budd); Dutch National Opera (debut in Pierre Audi’s production of Parsifal); Los Angeles Opera; Santa Fe Opera; Washington National Opera; Staatstheater Wiesbaden; English National Opera; Semperoper Dresden; Hamburg State Opera; Deutsche Oper Berlin; Deutsche Oper am Rhein; Teatro Colón; and many other companies.

CHAD SHELTON (UNITED STATES) TENOR—HEROD ANTIPAS

Butler Studio alumnus Chad Shelton appears regularly at HGO, including as the Chaplain in Dialogues of the Carmelites (2022); the Witch of Endor in Saul (2019); Patrick Kelly as well as a variety of other roles in The Phoenix (2019); Pollione in Norma and Aegisth in Elektra (both in 2018); Mao Tse-tung in Nixon in China (2017); Cavaradossi in Tosca (2015–16); Charles II in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players (2016); Froh in Das Rheingold and Fredrik Egerman in A Little Night Music (2014); and Alfredo in La traviata (2012), among many others. During the 2022-23 season he also sings Bob Boles in Peter Grimes at the Metropolitan Opera and returns to the company for its production of Norma. Recent performances include a return to the Grand Théâtre de Genève for Sir Edgar Aubry in Der Vampyr; Don José in Carmen with Austin Opera; his Metropolitan Opera debut and returns as Roderigo in Otello, Loud Stone in Aucoin’s Eurydice, and the Third Player in Dean’s Hamlet; Erik in The Flying Dutchman with Boston Lyric Opera; the title role in Idomeneo with Opéra national de Lorraine, Théâtre de Caen, and the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg; Giasone in Medea, Don José in Carmen, and Guido Bard in Eine florentinische Trogödie, also with Opéra national de Lorraine.

KARITA MATTILA (FINLAND) SOPRANO—HERODIAS

Karita Mattila is one of the most sought-after operatic sopranos in the world today. Her previous roles at HGO include Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte (1988 and 1991), Donna Anna in Don

Giovanni (1991), the title role in Manon Lescaut (2006), Leonore in Fidelio (2011), and Sieglinde in Die Walküre (2015). Her 2022-23 season also includes the role of Herodias in Salome at Opéra national de Paris and the Canadian Opera Company and her anticipated role debut as Klytämnestra in Strauss’s Elektra at Deutsche Oper Berlin. Recent performances include a triumphant return to the Salzburg Festival as La zia principessa in Suor Angelica; Poulenc’s La voix humaine at Finnish National Opera; and Kostelnička in Jenůfa at The Royal Opera, Covent Garden—all of which were internationally streamed and broadcast. Her many iconic roles include Emilia Marty in Janáček’s Věc Makropulos (San Francisco Opera, The Metropolitan Opera, Finnish National Opera, and at the BBC Proms); Sieglinde in Die Walküre (San Francisco Opera); Marie in Wozzeck (the Royal Opera House); and Madame de Croissy in Dialogues of the Carmelites (the Metropolitan Opera, in a performance broadcast worldwide in the Live in HD series). Mattila is the winner of two Grammy Awards, for her recordings of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg under Sir George Solti (1998) and Jenůfa under Bernard Haitink (2004). She was named Musical America’s Musician of the Year and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, and is a recipient of the Royal Philharmonic Society Award. She received the Order of the Lion of Finland, First Class Commander in 2020.

ERIC TAYLOR (UNITED STATES) TENOR—NARRABOTH

Drs. Rachel and Warren A. Ellsworth IV/ Sharon Ley Lietzow and Robert Lietzow/ Jill and Allyn Risley Fellow

A second-year Butler Studio artist from Saint George, Utah, Eric Taylor completed his Master of Music degree at Rice University, where he performed the roles of Sam Polk in Susannah and Tito in La clemenza di Tito. He was named the second prize winner in HGO’s 2021 Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias. Other HGO roles for 2022-23 include Gastone in La traviata and Don Curzio in The Marriage of Figaro. For HGO’s 2021-22 season, his roles included Chevalier in Dialogues of the Carmelites, First Armored Man in The Magic Flute, and Benvolio in mainstage and outdoor performances of Romeo and Juliet. While pursuing his undergraduate degree in music at Westminster College, he performed several leading roles, including Nemorino in The Elixir of Love and Rodolfo in La bohème, in addition to appearing in Carmina Burana with Salt Lake City’s Ballet West. Taylor has participated in Apprentice Artist programs with Santa Fe Opera, Central City Opera, and Utah Lyric Opera. He was named a semifinalist at the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions in 2017. He returned to the Santa Fe Opera in 2022 to perform the role of Melot in Tristan and Isolde and cover Don José in Carmen This summer, he will join Wolf Trap Opera in the title role of Faust

ERIN WAGNER (UNITED STATES) MEZZO-SOPRANO—PAGE OF HERODIAS

Amy and Mark Melton/ Drs. Liz Grimm and Jack Roth Fellow

A first-year Butler Studio artist, Erin Wagner is originally from El Paso. During the 2022-23 season at HGO, she also performed as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro. She is a winner of the 2021 Naumburg Foundation International Vocal Competition and, with pianist and composer Shawn Chang, the 2021 Juilliard Vocal Arts Honors Recital. Wagner was a 2021 Renée Fleming Artist at Aspen Music Festival, where she performed the roles of Second Lady (The Magic Flute) and Unulfo (Rodelinda); sang in scenes from Così fan tutte, La clemenza di Tito, and Semele; and premiered David Clay Mettenss’s The Sustaining Air. She worked with Fleming for Carnegie Hall’s 2021 SongStudio and received second prize in the 2021 Saengerbund Awards. She has performed with Steve Blier and Bénédicte Jourdois at Caramoor and with Brian Zeger at Juilliard Songfest. Wagner received her Master of Music degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Darrell Babidge and was a Gluck Community Service Fellow. She completed her Bachelor of Music degree at the Manhattan School of Music, where she studied with Joan Patenaude-Yarnell. In the summer of 2023, she will perform the role of Idamante in Idomeneo with the Aspen Music Festival.

MATTHEW GRILLS (UNITED STATES)

TENOR—FIRST JEW

For information on Matthew Grills, please see page 41.

RAFAEL MORAS (UNITED STATES)

TENOR—SECOND JEW

Rafael Moras returned to HGO this season after making his company debut as Father Matías in the 2019 world premiere of El Milagro del Recuerdo/The Miracle of Remembering, reprising the role over the holidays in 2022. During the 2021-22 season he made company debuts as Don José (Red Cast) with Minnesota Opera in Carmen, Alfredo in La traviata with Holy City Arts & Lyric Opera, and Father Matías in El Milagro del Recuerdo with Arizona Opera. He gave a recital for Austin Opera and the Consulate General of Mexico for their brand-new Concerts at the Consulate series, continued performances as a tenor soloist in Grammy Award-winning jazz trumpeter Chris Botti’s Chris Botti Live global tour, and performed in Entre Amigos, an all-star concert in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month with Fort Worth Opera. In 2023, Moras will make his Seattle Opera debut in the world premiere opera A Thousand Splendid Suns. An alumnus of LA Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program and The Santa

Fe Opera’s Apprentice Program for Singers, Moras is a 2019 Dallas Opera Guild Vocal Competition semifinalist, a 2017 and 2018 recipient of The Santa Fe Opera’s Richard Tucker Fund Award, a 2014 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions (Eric and Dominique Laffont Competition) Grand Finalist, 2014 Operalia quarterfinalist, and a 2013 and 2014 finalist in HGO’s Eleanor McCollum Competition.

RICARDO GARCIA (UNITED STATES)

TENOR—THIRD JEW

Michelle Beale and Dick Anderson/ Dr. Ellen R. Gritz and Mr. Milton D. Rosenau Jr. Fellow

A third-year Butler Studio artist from Castro Valley, California, Ricardo Garcia completed his Master of Music in Voice at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and holds a Bachelor of Music in Voice from the University of the Pacific. His other roles for 2022-23 at HGO include Alfredo Germont in alternate cast performances of La traviata and Schmidt in Werther. For the company's 2021-22 season, his roles included El Remendado in Carmen, Papí/Jasper in alternate cast performances of The Snowy Day, First Commissioner in Dialogues of the Carmelites, and Romeo in alternate cast and outdoor performances of Romeo and Juliet

During the 2020-21 HGO Digital season he appeared in Vinkensport as Hans Sach’s Trainer; The Making of The Snowy Day, an Opera for All; and Suite Española: Explorando Iberia. In summer 2021, he returned to Wolf Trap Opera as Valcour in The Anonymous Lover and sang the role of Grimoaldo in Rodelinda at the Aspen Music Festival. In summer 2022, he performed the role of Fabrizio Naccarelli in The Light in the Piazza with Central City Opera and joined Boston Lyric Opera in his company debut as Romeo in Romeo and Juliet, a role he also will perform in summer 2023 with Central City Opera.

CHRISTOPHER BOZEKA (UNITED STATES)

TENOR—FOURTH JEW

Butler Studio alumnus Christopher Bozeka won second prize in the 2015 Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias. At HGO, he sang Messenger in Aida and Don Gaspar in La favorite (both in 2020); Pedrillo in The Abduction from the Seraglio (2017); select performances of Nemorino in The Elixir of Love and Spoletta in outdoor performances of Tosca (both in 2016); Male Emilia in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players, Hunter in Rusalka, and Don Curzio in The Marriage of Figaro (all in 2016); and Drunkard/ Lamplighter in The Little Prince (2015). Engagements in 2022-23 include his company debut with Livermore Valley Opera as Nemorino in The Elixir of Love, a return to The Metropolitan Opera roster covering Second Priest in the holiday production of The Magic Flute, and a debut as the title role in Le comte ory with Opera Southwest.

CORY MCGEE (UNITED STATES)

BASS—FIFTH JEW

Beth Madison Fellow

For information on Cory McGee, please see page 41.

DANIEL NOYOLA (MEXICO)

BASS—FIRST SOLDIER

For information on Daniel Noyola, please see page 41.

NICHOLAS NEWTON (UNITED STATES)

BASS-BARITONE—SECOND SOLDIER

For information on Nicholas Newton, please see page 40.

WILLIAM GUANBO SU (CHINA)

BASS—FIRST NAZARENE

Butler Studio alumnus William Guanbo Su’s previous roles with the company include Zuniga in Carmen, First Officer in Dialogues of the Carmelites, Second Armored Man in The Magic Flute, A Mandarin in Turandot, and the Duke of Verona in Romeo and Juliet, all during the 2021-22 season; Bowie Krebs in The Impresario during the 2020-21 HGO Digital season; and Usher in Rigoletto in fall 2019. In the current season, in addition to this return to HGO, he returns to the Metropolitan Opera as the Speaker in The Magic Flute, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis as Blitch in Susannah, and Austin Opera as Basilio in The Barber of Seville. He also makes a role and company debut with Boston Lyric Opera as Colline in La bohème. Last season and previously, he made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as the Jailer in Tosca, after singing that role as well as Angelotti with Austin Opera. He debuted the roles of Sarastro in The Magic Flute, Garibaldo in Rodelinda, and Basilio in The Barber of Seville at the Aspen Music Festival. He was a Grand Finals Winner of the 2019 Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and the second place winner in HGO’s 2019 Eleanor McCollum Competition Concert of Arias.

NAVASARD HAKOBYAN (ARMENIA) BARITONE—SECOND NAZARENE

Melinda and Bill Brunger/ Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Nickson/ Gloria M. Portela Fellow

A first-year Butler Studio artist, Armenian baritone Navasard Hakobyan won first place at HGO’s 2022 Eleanor McCollum Competition

Concert of Arias. During the 2022-23 season at HGO, his other roles include Baron Douphol in La traviata and Antonio in The Marriage of Figaro. He has been a member of the young artist program of the National Academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet in Yerevan, Armenia since 2018. His roles in the 2020-21 season included Silvio in Pagliacci, Giorgio Germont in La traviata, and Belcore in a new production of The Elixir of Love. He has won numerous international competitions, including first prize in the Premiere Opera Foundation International Vocal Competition and third prize in the José Carreras Grand Prix in Moscow, Russia. Hakobyan received his master’s degree at Komitas State Conservatory of Yerevan. He was named the 2019 winner of the President of the Republic of Armenia Youth Prize. In summer 2023, he will perform the role of Marcello in La bohème at Music Academy of the West.

MERYL DOMINGUEZ (UNITED STATES)

SOPRANO—A SLAVE

Mr. and Mrs. Harlan C. Stai Fellow

A first-year Butler Studio artist, Cuban-American soprano Meryl Dominguez, originally from Brooklyn, is making her HGO mainstage debut; this season she also created the role of Skyspace Woman in the world premiere of Another City at Ecclesia Houston, and will perform as Violetta in La traviata at Miller Outdoor Theatre. Dominguez made her international debut as the title character in Norma with Musica Viva Hong Kong. She was a resident artist at Philadelphia’s Academy of Vocal Arts, where she performed roles such as Violetta (La traviata), Juliet (Romeo and Juliet), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Rosalinde (Die Fledermaus), Adina (The Elixir of Love), and Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), which she also performed with Knoxville Opera. As an apprentice artist at Santa Fe Opera, she sang the role of Naiade in Ariadne auf Naxos. She has Bachelor of Arts degrees in Dance and Voice Performance from Oberlin College and Conservatory. In addition to her operatic roles, she is an enthusiastic advocate for art song and new music.

LUKE SUTLIFF (UNITED STATES)

BARITONE—A CAPPADOCIAN

Lynn Gissel/ Mrs. Brenda Harvey-Traylor/ Nancy Haywood Fellow

For information on Luke Sutliff, please see page 41.

JOURNEYS

A voyage into Houston Grand Opera’s 2023-24 season

By Patrick Summers, Artistic and Music Director Sarah and Ernest Butler Chair

Californian Jake Heggie (b. 1961) has been the leading composer of operas in the United States for the past nearlyquarter century. His first, Dead Man Walking, premiered in 2000, is based on Sister Helen Prejean’s unexpected journey from spiritual advisor to a doomed death row inmate in Louisiana to lifelong death penalty activist. The opera has had many productions and two major recordings, both of which I have been privileged to conduct.

Dead Man Walking will open the Metropolitan Opera season in New York next fall, starring HGO’s own Joyce DiDonato. Simultaneously, the world premiere of Jake’s newest Intelligence, will launch our 68th season at Houston Grand Opera, the first time our American company has opened with an American opera. This makes Jake Heggie the first composer since Giacomo Puccini to have two operas opening two major seasons, and he is the first American to experience this extreme rarity. His personal journey to this moment is part of the deeper story of American opera, one in which HGO has

Dead Man Walking more than 20 years ago, and thus the first aria of Jake’s career, is an extended sequence for the character of Sister Helen, “This Journey.” As the real Sister writes in the introduction to her 1993 book which shares a title with the opera, there are essentially two types of important stories: “when an extraordinary person is plunged into the commonplace and when an ordinary person gets involved in extraordinary events.”

Amazingly, Jake’s new opera for HGO, Intelligence, set during and after the American Civil War, manages to combine both of these types of stories. His co-creators, librettist Gene Scheer and director/choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, have supported him in fashioning this amazing story.

Few stories in the American diaspora are as complex as the one told within Intelligence, ing as to why we’ve never heard them before. Intelligence American women, Mary Jane Bowser and Elizabeth Van Lew. Mary Jane, enslaved by the Van Lew family, was of singular intelligence, as Elizabeth discovered upon educating her, an illegal act in the antebellum south. Elizabeth knew exactly how she wanted to use Mary Jane’s gifts: as a spy for the North during the Civil War, and she placed her in Jefferson Davis’s Confederate White House, where she was both in great peril but also never suspected as a spy.

Elizabeth was full of ambiguous contradictions. She was obviously a slave-owner herself, yet she was an abolitionist in Richmond, Virginia, not an easy place to hold such a view. Secrets were kept from Mary Jane by Elizabeth that would never have been kept from a white person, and that, too, is an important part of her journey. Their relationship was clearly an unusual one: Mary Jane went north after the war, and even traveled to Africa, always returning to Elizabeth in Richmond.

Intelligence will feature a major HGO debut by a major dance company, Urban Bush Women, and will be directed by their founder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, one of the most visionary artists in the country. Urban Bush Women are not merely dancers; they will portray a silent and kinetic Greek chorus of many characters within the drama of Intelligence The Trinidadian-Canadian conductor Kwamé Ryan will make his HGO debut conducting this world premiere.

Intelligence tells an American story based on real events, and like so much of our country’s painful past, it will not be its only telling, nor should it be. Like other great American stories, the unusual journey of Mary Jane, one of Sister Helen’s “extraordinary people,” should be retold many times from the perspectives of many voices. One of the major journeys of next season at HGO is how America’s most renowned opera composer found his way to this story and this set of creators, and how the telling of it has become

the great passion of his professional life. The composer of has, unsurprisingly, a little bit of Captain Ahab’s obsession

Of course, operas are much more than their plots and settings. There is also, within each work, the long trek of each performer and how they made their way to you here at HGO. There are hundreds of these stories, all of them interesting, but let’s take just one, the journey of Ailyn Perez Madame Butterfly, which

Our resident performing forces, HGO’s wonderful orchestra and chorus, are Houstonians, and they are involved in every production we do. They are part of the musical fabric of our city in myriad ways, as teachers and performers with many arts groups. The solo singers, though, including the young artists of the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio, come to us from all over the world, are heard at the varying stages of their careers, and are selected specifically for each opera, chosen with enormous care and detail.

But if opera auditions were odds at a Las Vegas blackjack table, you wouldn’t bet anything, because the probability of being hired from an audition is very slim. The majority of singers for leading roles at HGO are selected after being heard around the world in colleague companies. Still, every once in a while, a singer will walk in and blow everyone away. Enter Ailyn Perez.

We had rarely heard such radiant, effortless, and starmaking singing as we did during her audition. So, we cast her immediately as Desdemona in Verdi’s Otello for the opening of our 2014-15 season, and she was off and running. Ailyn has since become one of the most renowned singers in the world, appearing most recently in Houston as Donna Anna in our last outing of Don Giovanni. Her appearance in the title role of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly in Michael Grandage’s production is a culminating moment of her career achievements thus far, as she joins a pantheon of sopranos from nearly every country who have brought a vast range of insights to one of opera’s iconic roles.

Verdi and Wagner were both born in 1813, and though they never met, they were by far the leading cultural figures of their century, and each may be more influential now than when they were alive. Verdi wrote primarily for audiences, which may seem obvious, but not all composers did. Wagner was an igniter who lit divisive cultural fires that are still burn ing, and he was more interested in changing an audience than in merely diverting or entertaining them. To have their two final operas, Falstaff and same season has been a long dream of mine because both operas, in divergent ways, are bridges between what came before them and what followed.

Falstaff is a joyous guffaw of an opera, filled with life’s humanizing pleasures, most especially in the gloriously bubbly fugue that closes it, the last music Verdi wrote—what a way to close your composing life! There is a glow around Falstaff, and conducting it is one of the greatest pleasures of my privileged profession. I can’t wait to get our wonderful cast, led by Reginald Smith, Jr. in the title role, into the rehearsal room!

Parsifal is for many people a profound spiritual experience, utterly unlike anything else in opera, a mystical presence as much as a performance. It is part of Arthurian lore and so is a very ancient story, an opera that on its surface is about the protection of the cup used at the Last Supper and which caught the blood of Jesus Christ at his crucifixion, the Holy Grail. Parsifal is also Wagner’s attempt in old age to combine the world’s religious traditions into a single unifying work. For Wagner, Parsifal wasn’t an opera at all, but a total experience of something both frozen and ineffable, `beyond words and music, a sonic sacred space.

Opening the door to Parsifal is helped by a single line from its own libretto. Walking Parsifal to the Hall of the Holy Grail in the opera’s first act, the Knight Gurnemanz explains to

that will be.

Other important journeys await next season. The Big Swim, our collaboration with Asia Society, where it will make its world premiere (HGO’s 76th) next spring, takes us entertainingly into the world of the Chinese Zodiac, as each animal fights for supremacy. This new score, by Meilina Tsui, has an ingenious libretto by Melisa Tien which brings theatrical life to the rabbit, horse, snake, sheep, ox, pig, monkey, rat, tiger, rooster, dragon, and dog of the traditional Chinese names for each year, with the audience playing the most vital character, the Jade Emperor, who will decide the winner of their race.

Two beloved works bring this enormous season to an end in the spring of 2024. Mozart’s endlessly enriching Don Giovanni returns in Kasper Holten’s visceral and visually unmooring production. Few stories of any kind live in the space between comedy and tragedy, between light and dark, as magnificently as Don Giovanni. Dame Jane Glover, one of the world’s great Mozartians as well as the author

of an indispensable book on Mozart, Mozart’s Women, will conduct this amazing cast, led by the Italian bassbaritone Luca Pisaroni in the title role. Ryan McKinny, who originated the title role in this production the last time we performed it, now takes on the comic role who is the light side of Don Giovanni’s darkness, Leporello, adding significantly to his long journey of stardom with our company over the past 20 years.

One of the great journey stories, The Sound of Music, was the final collaboration of the phenomenal 18-year partnership of composer Richard Rodgers and librettist Oscar Hammerstein II. The names Rodgers and Hammerstein were, for several generations of Americans, synonymous with quality. They led a post-WWII era of innovation in American musical theater, an era when American opera was in its rather un-innovative infancy, with very few new operas to be found.

Fast-forward to this moment of our young century and its nearly 300 new operas, something unimaginable when Rodgers and Hammerstein were writing their beloved works, and the innovation they championed has shifted away from Broadway and into opera houses. The musicals from the classic era of Broadway, like of Music a uniquely American form of theater, a blood relative to opera, not a brother or sister, but a cousin.

The Sound of Music is well known largely because of the famous 1966 film that starred the great Julie Andrews and, it must be said, co-starred the unearthly Alpine beauty of Mozart’s birthplace of Salzburg, Austria. Seeing it on stage is quite a different experience from watching the film, if only because the anti-Nazi sentiments are more clearly and ironically spelled out. There are songs in the stage version missing from the film, and The Sound of Music unquestionably requires some operatic forces, as evidenced by the number of opera singers who populated its original cast, from Patricia Neway, (a famous Tosca, and the soprano for whom The Consul was written), to Patricia Brooks (one of the great stars of the old City Opera), to the legendary Tatiana Troyanos. Even Mary Martin, long the darling of Broadway by the time The Sound of Music was written for her, was operatically trained. The only place in the 21st century where you will experience The Sound of Music as Rodgers and Hammerstein imagined it is in an opera house, with a full orchestra and chorus and voices who can fulfill its demands.

will bring the multiple journeys of next season to culmination. From the great new American story ; to the burst of truthful human laughter that ended Verdi’s long and historic career, Falstaff; to the familiar Italian operas influenced by dozens of other cultures, Don Giovanni; to the old origins of ; to the more ancient mystical beauties of —there is a journey for everyone.

It is very likely you will hear music when you read the following four words: “the hills are alive.” This isn’t mere familiarity, but something deeper and more important in contemplating a new season. At the beating heart of opera, music ensouls words. We don’t fully know how or why, but we know music achieves this little miracle.

Embedded in the dreams of next season, in all of the wonderful artists, in the mixture of newness with comforting familiarity, and in the long trajectory of post-pandemic plans, support, and belief that brought us to this moment, one lyric continually repeats. These are words that every artist deeply understands because they describe the only way to a fulfilling

artistic life. Indeed, they are words that ring with universal truth about anything that any of us deeply love. You’ll likely also hear music as you read these words, which is an invitation to another journey:

“A dream that will need all the love you can give, every day of your life for as long as you live.”

Patrick Summers March 21, 2023 Houston, TX

CONCERT OF ARIAS 2023

February 3, 2023

As this year’s thrilling Concert of Arias came to a close, HGO General Director and CEO Khori Dastoor—with the help of superstar soprano Tamara Wilson and an ensemble of fellow HGO Studio alumni—shared to a full house and thousands of livestream viewers that the company’s worldrenowned young artist training program was getting a new name thanks to largest philanthropic investment HGO has received in its 68-year history. Leading the standing ovation in celebration of the newly named Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio were chairs of the evening, decades long HGO supporters Glen Rosenbaum and Rita Leader

The 35th Annual Eleanor McCollum Competition for Young Singers Concert of Arias saw eight finalists each perform two arias for judges Khori Dastoor, Grammy Award-winning soprano Isabel Leonard, and HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers. Following the concert, the celebration continued with a dinner in the Grand Foyer catered by Jackson and Company, with décor by The Events Company. The event saw record attendance and raised over $660,000 to benefit the future of the operatic art form through the Butler Studio’s recruitment, nurturing, and support of world-class young artists. The next Concert of Arias will take place on February 2, 2024. HGO.org/SpecialEvents

Butler Studio artist Ricardo Garcia, Ellen Gritz, Mickey Rosenau

C.C. and Duke Ensell

Finalist Ani Kushyan with Butler Studio artist (and 2022 COA winner) Navasard Hakobyan

Butler Studio artist Cory McGee, Beth Madison

Aerin and Quentin Smith

Dr. Stephen Klineberg, Reinnette and Stan Marek

Competition prize winner Michael McDermott with judges Patrick Summers, Isabel Leonard, and Khori Dastoor

HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers with event chairs Rita Leader and Glen Rosenbaum

Beth Wolff, Anna Dean, Cheryl Byington

Drs. Bob Phillips and Julia Andrieni, finalist Gosh Sargsyan, Butler Studio artist Luke Sutliff, Teresa and José Ivo

Event chairs Rita Leader and Glen Rosenbaum with the 2023 finalists

Elizabeth and Richard Husseini, prize winner Demetrious Sampson, Jr., and Butler Studio artist Emily Treigle

HGO's Scott Ipsen, Lynn Gissel, Mickey and Susan Bloome

Natalie Lewis (in red, at center) was announced as the first place winner.

Cheryl and Mike Clancy

Joe Greenberg and HGO Board Chair Claire Liu

Pavel Blinchik and Emily Schultz

HEARTS OF GOLD LUNCHEON

February 14, 2023

This Valentine’s Day, the HGO Special Events Host Committee chaired by Betty Tutor was tickled pink to gather on the Porch at Ouisie’s Table for the Hearts of Gold luncheon benefiting the Opera Ball silent auction. Generosity was on full display as attendees arrived, auction contributions in hand, before enjoying lunch and laughter all in the name of love for HGO. For information on HGO’s signature Special Events, visit HGO.org/SpecialEvents, call 713-546-0700, or email SpecialEvents@HGO.org.

HGO's Amanda Neiter, Anne Chao, Laura McWilliams

Cynthia Petrello, Khori Dastoor

Janet Carrig, Melanie Jarrell, Amanda Gelb

Betty Tutor, Saula Valente

David Peck, Lauren Randle

Betty Tutor with Daniel Irion Yini Collette, Jennifer Fink

Elizabeth Colombowala, Valerie Dieterich

YOUNG PATRONS CIRCLE AND BUTLER STUDIO DINNER

March 13, 2023

Members of HGO's Young Patrons Circle gathered at Montrose's storied La Colombe d'Or for the 15th annual Young Patrons Circle and Butler Studio Dinner. Following cocktails al fresco, dinner delighted in the mansion’s French bistro, Tonight & Tomorrow. Steve Zimmerman, art collector and La Colombe d'Or owner, welcomed the well-heeled group with background on the history of the property and the art that adorns it. All that and lively conversation alongside the Butler Studio artists made for an epically artful evening for all. For information on YPC membership and benefits, contact Sarah Long at 713-9808687 or SLong@HGO.org.

Butler Studio artists Eric Taylor, Bin Yu Sanford, Navasard Hakobyan

Stephanie Kimbrell, Joshua Allison, Michelle Klinger, Ruain Flanagan

Butler Studio artists Meryl Dominguez, Cory McGee, and Emily Treigle, with Butler Studio Music Director Maureen Zoltek

Constance Rose Edwards, Nancy Q

Liam and Tara McElhiney, Catarina Saraiva and Justin Rowinsky

LIFE AFTER THE HGO BUTLER STUDIO

Honoring our 2023 graduates

By Brian Speck, Director, Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio

The end of the HGO season is always bittersweet for everyone at the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio, because it means saying farewell to artists who are completing their time in the program. During the years spent with the company, Studio artists build bonds with each other and with the company. Of course, we often see alumni back for principal roles in Houston, and seeing them depart is also a moment of pride, as plans for the future develop and new opportunities arise.

Membership in the Butler Studio offers many benefits for artists, among them the chance to build a professional network and gain recognition that facilitates future work. Each of this year’s graduating artists has taken advantage of this opportunity, and though there is no one way to pursue an artistic life, each has forged an exciting path.

For many singers, the end of their time as a Butler Studio member signals a moment to make a big move. Third-year tenor Ricardo Garcia is headed to Europe, where he will become a “fest” singer in Darmstadt, Germany. Singers who work in the German “fest” system are contracted to a single opera house to perform a variety of roles, but are often allotted time to be away for guest contracts

with other companies. Ricardo starts his time in Darmstadt with a dream role—Lensky in Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. His tenure with the company will also include Alfredo in La traviata, a role he debuted in alternate cast performances at HGO. During his time in Houston, Ricardo forged a relationship with his current artist manager, Kristin Cowdin, who arranged his European audition tour in late 2022. Following three years of experience at HGO, he will be well-prepared to thrive in Germany, where a busy theater schedule can mean juggling several roles in a period of weeks. Before making the move overseas, Ricardo will reprise the role of Romeo (also performed at HGO) at Central City Opera.

Second-year tenor Eric Taylor has an exciting year ahead, anchored around a role that has long been on his wish-list: B.F. Pinkerton in Madame Butterfly. During his first year at HGO, Eric worked closely with soprano Christine Goerke as a member of the cast of Dialogues of the Carmelites. Christine, who recently took on the position of associate artistic director at Detroit Opera, remembered his outstanding performances and offered him the chance to sing his first Pinkerton in Detroit. At the same time, HGO was in the planning stages for our own Butterfly next season, and looking for a tenor to take on the challenging role in the alternate cast. We didn’t need to look any further than our own Butler Studio—Eric

From left to right: Tenor Ricardo Garcia (with fellow Butler Studio artist Meryl Dominguez), tenor Eric Taylor, bass Cory McGee, baritone Luke Sutliff, and pianist and coach Bin Yu Sanford

Photo credits: Wilson Parish and Latroya Brooks.

will return to Houston next winter to sing Pinkerton in Houston, just a few months after debuting the role in Detroit. Before tackling that part, Eric has another very exciting role slated, as the titular character in Gounod’s Faust at Wolf Trap Opera.

Future opportunities may come through connections made directly by the Butler Studio staff, HGO leadership, artist managers, or any number of other methods—by the time an artist graduates from the program, there is usually a “buzz” about them in the industry. Cory McGee’s first engagements after the Butler Studio have arisen from this combination: this fall, he will make his debut with Opera Philadelphia as Pietro in Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra. That will come right on the heels of a summer engagement certain to raise his reputation in opera: the title role in Don Giovanni at Wolf Trap Opera. In the past several months, Cory has impressed one panel after another in auditions around the world.

Luke Sutliff heads straight to Santa Fe Opera, where he was an apprentice singer for two summers. Having proven himself and his talent, Luke was hired to return as a guest artist this summer, covering the coveted role of Pelléas in Pelléas et Mélisande—a role he first tested out in HGO’s Butler Studio Showcase in 2022. During his time at HGO, Luke was pursued by several artist managers, ultimately landing

with Michael Benchetrit, who heard him as one of three HGO winners at the Sara Tucker Career Grant auditions. Benchetrit is a stellar colleague who also manages the careers of Butler Studio alumni Jamie Barton and Reginald Smith, Jr., and he was instrumental in securing a banner season for Luke, including role debuts as Silvio in Pagliacci (Lyric Opera of Kansas City) and Figaro in The Barber of Seville (North Carolina Opera). Luke has coached both roles extensively at HGO. He will also reprise a past favorite role, Demetrius in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Atlanta Opera.

Finally, we can’t forget our superstar pianist and coach, Bin Yu Sanford, who in just a few weeks is off to join the music staff at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for the summer. Bin will be the principal coach for Floyd’s Susannah, a work she was uniquely positioned to learn through study at HGO. During her final weeks in Houston, Bin will work with Richard Bado and Patrick Summers on the score, both of whom collaborated closely with the opera’s composer, Carlisle Floyd. She is rising swiftly in the opera world in the most traditional way: by displaying excellence and valuable skill in her work with conductors and developing positive and lasting relationships with colleagues. When a pianist does great work, they are in demand, and Bin will join the music staff at San Francisco Opera next season, beginning with Lohengrin under the baton of Eun Sun

Kim, HGO’s principal guest conductor and San Francisco Opera’s music director. Bin first worked with Maestro Kim at HGO, as a member of the music staff for Turandot

As we look forward to welcoming our incoming artists, the Butler Studio won’t be the same without these four incredible performers. Their hard work and dedication over the past few years sets a high bar for the future, and I’m proud to share these engagements—which are just the beginning of their careers. ∎

BUTLER STUDIO ARTISTS 2022–23

Meryl Dominguez, soprano

Mr. and Mrs. Harlan C. Stai Fellow

Ricardo Garcia, tenor

Michelle Beale and Dick Anderson / Dr. Ellen R. Gritz and Mr. Milton D. Rosenau Jr. Fellow

Navasard Hakobyan, baritone

Melinda and Bill Brunger /

Mr. and Mrs. Charles G. Nickson / Gloria M. Portela Fellow

Cory McGee, bass

Beth Madison Fellow

BUTLER STUDIO FACULTY & STAFF

Brian Speck, Studio Director

Maureen Zoltek, Studio Music Director, Mr. and Mrs. Albert B. Alkek Chair

Jamie Gelfand, Studio Manager

Ana María Martínez, HGO Artistic Advisor

Stephen King, Director of Vocal Instruction

Sponsored by Jill and Allyn Risley, Janet Sims, and James J. Drach Endowment Fund

Patrick Summers, Conducting Instructor and Coach, Sarah and Ernest Butler Chair

BUTLER STUDIO SUPPORTERS

The Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio is grateful for the in-kind support of the Texas Voice Center and for Mr. and Mrs. Richard J. Langenstein's support of the Concert of Arias audition tour. The Young Artists Vocal Academy (YAVA) is generously underwritten by Mr. and Mrs. Robert N. Wakefield and the HGO Guild.

Additional support for YAVA is provided by Mr. Patrick Carfizzi, Gwyneth Campbell, and David and Norine Gill. HGO thanks Magnolia Houston for outstanding support of the Butler Studio and YAVA programs.

Additional support for the Butler Studio is provided by Sylvia Barnes and Jim Trimble, Dr. Raymond Chinn, Mr. and Mrs. Melvyn Hetzel, Marsha L. Montemayor, Ms. Diane K. Morales,

Michelle Papenfuss, pianist/coach

Dr. Saúl and Ursula Balagura / Dr. Laura E. Sulak and Dr. Richard W. Brown Fellow

Renée Richardson, soprano

Kathleen Moore and Steven Homer / Carolyn J. Levy / Jeff Stocks and Juan Lopez Fellow

Luke Sutliff, baritone

Lynn Gissel/ Brenda Harvey-Traylor / Nancy Haywood Fellow

Eric Taylor, tenor

Drs. Rachel and Warren A. Ellsworth IV / Sharon Ley Lietzow and Robert Lietzow / Jill and Allyn Risley Fellow

Emily Treigle, mezzo-soprano

Mr. and Mrs. James W. Crownover / John Serpe and Tracy Maddox Fellow

Erin Wagner, mezzo-soprano

Amy and Mark Melton / Drs. Liz Grimm and Jack Roth Fellow

Bin Yu Sanford, pianist/coach

Lynn Des Prez/ Stephanie Larsen / Dr. and Mrs. Miguel Miro-Quesada Fellow

Peter Pasztor, Principal Coach

Sponsored by Mr. and Mrs. James A. Elkins Jr. Endowment Fund

Kirill Kuzmin, Head of Music Staff

Kevin J. Miller, Assistant Conductor

Madeline Slettedahl, Assistant Conductor

Brian Connelly, Piano Instructor

Tara Faircloth, Drama Coach, Showcase Director

Adam Noble, Movement Instructor, Showcase Fight and Intimacy Director

Christa Gaug, German Instructor

Enrica Vagliani Gray, Italian Instructor

Sponsored by Marsha Montemayor

Raymond Hounfodji, French Instructor

Sponsored by Craig Miller and Chris Bacon

Joy Jonstone, English Instructor

Warren Jones, Guest Coach

Hemdi Kfir, Guest Coach

Thomas Lausmann, Guest Coach

Mr. and Mrs. Jay Watkins, Trey Yates, and the following funds within the Houston Grand Opera Endowment, Inc.:

The Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation

Endowment Fund

Marjorie and Thomas Capshaw

Endowment Fund

James J. Drach Endowment Fund

The Evans and Portela Family Fund

Carol Lynn Lay Fletcher Endowment Fund

William Randolph Hearst

Endowed Scholarship Fund

Charlotte Howe Memorial Scholarship Fund

Elva Lobit Opera Endowment Fund

Marian and Speros Martel  Foundation Endowment Fund

Erin Gregory Neale Endowment Fund

Dr. Mary Joan Nish and  Patricia Bratsas Endowed Fund

John M. O’Quinn Foundation Endowed Fund

Shell Lubricants (formerly PennzoilQuaker  State Company) Fund

Mary C. Gayler Snook Endowment Fund

Tenneco, Inc., Endowment Fund

Weston-Cargill Endowed Fund

Mary C. Gayler Snook Endowment Fund

OUT OF CHARACTER

RYAN MCKINNY

By Catherine Matusow

This season at HGO, Ryan McKinny performs as Jokanaan in Strauss's Salome. Photo credit: Jiyang Chen.

Suave. Elegant. Charismatic. Riveting. Devilishly attractive. A voice that drips with gold. These are just a few bits of the rapturous acclaim bass-baritone Ryan McKinny, one of the leading artists in all of opera, has received over his career, which was launched right here in Houston.

McKinny joined the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio in 2005 and went on to spend three years training with the program, after which he and his family were based in Houston for the better part of a decade. They now live in Asheville, North Carolina, but McKinny still has a special place in his heart for this city, and for HGO, which he considers his home company.

“It’s my favorite place to sing,” says McKinny, who has performed at the Wortham more than any other house during a career that has taken him around the globe.

McKinny just may be the busiest man in show business. In addition to his opera engagements, he is dedicated to championing the kind of digital art he and HGO pioneered during the pandemic—he played a major role in the first season of HGO Digital, starring in and co-directing Vinkensport and directing Bon Appétit! with his wife Tonya—and recently was named the head of U.S. content partnerships for Marquee TV.

He and Tonya home-school their children so the family can be together when McKinny’s opera career takes him on the road. He also runs, sails, and serves on the president’s leadership council for Search for Common Ground, the world’s largest peacebuilding organization. How does he balance it all?

“When I figure it out, I’ll let you know,” he says with a laugh.

This season McKinny performs as Jokanaan in Salome at HGO, and in typical fashion, he’s also taken on a number

of other roles with the company. The Real Divas of HGO, a hysterical short film starring several of the leading ladies from this season’s operas, imagines what would happen if their characters gathered for a Real Housewives-style dinner party. The credits list him and Tonya as “producers, directors, camera operators, editors, best boys, and diva wranglers.” If you haven’t seen it yet, a delightful 10 minutes awaits you; search for it on YouTube. And read on for more about the man who loses his head at HGO this spring in Strauss’s Salome

Opera Cues: How do you remember your experience with the Butler Studio?

Ryan McKinny: What was great about it is that I was in so many productions. I was in just everything—I had a small role, or I was covering. Just being on stage that much was so big for me, and having a great voice teacher in Dr. Stephen King, and great coaching, and a place that was very high level, artistically, but also not so pressurized as New York or Chicago. There was a little more room for me to not be perfect, which I now really value.

Richard Bado was a big fan of mine right from the beginning, and I really got along well with him, and Patrick Summers has been such a mentor of mine over the years. And HGO has really been amazing about hiring me back as a guest artist. Houston audiences know me now. I’m so excited to do Salome, because it feels like a role I can really deliver to an audience that I care about, and I think they’re going to love it.

OC: How did the Butler Studio prepare you for your career in opera?

RM: Gosh, in so many ways. The combination of taking risks and being as prepared as you possibly can be—I came to feel very strongly those were two sides of the one artist I was trying to learn to be. And the nuts and bolts of how to prepare for a role wasn’t something I really understood before my time there. I watched world-class artists, and how they interact with their cast and with conductors and with directors. And I learned so much from the coaching staff, musically, and from visiting directors, as an actor, how to sing in a big opera house. I could never have had this career without my time in the Studio.

OC: You’ve performed in dozens of HGO productions. What are your personal highlights?

RM: The first would be one of my very first performances. I was singing the small role of the police officer in Boris Godunov, but Sam Ramey was singing Boris, and just being on stage with him was so incredible, and with the HGO Chorus—I had never heard an opera chorus like that. They were so good. And that just sort of opened my eyes to what was possible. And then, later on, I sang my first Kurwenal in Tristan und Isolde, and that was with Nina Stemme singing Isolde and Ben Heppner singing Tristan. It was my first big Wagner role, and it was just so exciting.

Ryan McKinny as Don Giovanni at HGO in 2019.

Photo credit: Lynn Lane

OC: The last time you performed as Jokanaan in Salome was in 2015 in Santa Fe. What is it like to return to the role now?

RM: Seven years is long enough that you’re kind of working with a brand new voice, which in my case is really funny because I’m much better equipped to sing it now than I was then. You know, a bass-baritone—when you get into your forties, that’s kind of when it all comes together. My voice has a little more weight than it used to. I’m a little bit better singer than I was. It’s fun to go through it again because everything feels a little better. There’s more choices I can make. I’m really excited for it.

OC: How do you approach this character?

RM: He’s tricky. He’s an enigma. You can sort of be sympathetic to him or not, as an audience member. When he’s talking to Salome, he only speaks to her in these prophecies. He can’t talk to her like a real human being. Depending on the production, it can be classic—he really is just giving her the word of God and trying to warn her—or he can represent patriarchy, old thinking, the inability to see other people as human. I’m excited to see how the production goes. But your big job, when you sing John the Baptist, is to sing a lot of loud, high stuff, so that’s the biggest challenge, always. It’s amazing music.

OC: Why should people come see this opera?

RM: Salome is one of the best first operas to see if you’ve never seen one. It’s so sonically and dramatically packed. Every scene is intense, and the whole thing is compact. It’s so short. It’s one act. It’s big music. It’s opera opera. If you’ve never heard a Strauss orchestra or a Strauss singer make this music—you feel it in your body in a way that you never would just at home on your speakers. And it has a bunch of distinct, amazing moments in it. It’s a little bit of a horror flick. If you’re into creepy movies, this is one you might love. But even if you aren’t, the music on its own, and how fast-paced it is—it’s one I think everyone should go see.

OC: In 2019 you starred as Don Giovanni at HGO. Next season you’ll perform as Leporello. What is it like to take on a different role within the same opera?

RM: The acting part of what we do is one of my favorite parts, so I enjoy being different characters. I played Leporello back when I was in college. I’ve also played Masetto, and I covered the Commendatore when I was at Juilliard. So I have all four of the men’s roles in my brain somewhere. It does make it a little tricky when you’re doing ensembles, where everyone’s singing, to remember which thing you’re doing. And in recits, I’m sure that will be challenging, too.

It’s a totally different perspective on the piece if you’re playing Leporello than if you’re playing Giovanni. I’m excited to flip it on its head and experience it from a different direction. It will be fun. I hardly ever get to do comedy, and I really love it.

OC: How did the short film you made, The Real Housewives of HGO, come to exist?

RM: Khori Dastoor, Tonya, and I were just talking about things we could work on together related to HGO’s season. And Khori gave us artistic license to do what we wanted. I can’t remember if it was Tonya’s idea or mine to have a potluck of all the divas together. But it was her idea to have the head of John the Baptist be a cake, which I feel like was the best idea of all.

I know a lot of these women, and even though most of them are known for doing serious roles, they’re all extremely funny people. And so we thought, if we let each of them be their characters but kind of an extreme version, and make it like Real Housewives, it will write itself, which it did. So, Tonya and I came up with a handful of scenarios. We showed up, and let the cameras run, and just said, go ahead and improvise. And so much of what is very funny is straight from those women, who came up with ideas on the spot.

OC: About that cake…

RM: We had to plan the cake way ahead of time, and we had a person in Houston make it. But then we realized we were going to have to film in Santa Fe, because the hardest part of the whole thing was getting all these women in the same place.

We couldn’t fit it in an airplane cabin, so the day before the shoot, I ended flying to Houston and driving the head back to Santa Fe, which is a replica of my own head. (laughs) So I had a severed head that was a cake in the passenger seat of the car, and I was just terrified that I would ruin it. But somehow I didn’t! And then, cutting it—we had one take, and that was a little scary. But we all just had a blast that day. ∎

McKinny will never forget performing with HGO in Boris Godunov

Photo credit: Ted Washington

Seeking the Human Spirit, HGO’s multidisciplinary initiative highlighting the universal spiritual themes raised in opera, will conclude this May. HGO operas have been the basis to explore different themes each season: Sacrifice, Identity, Faith, Transformation, Character, and Spirit.

On May 18, HGO will present Music and Meditations, the culmination of six years of spiritual exploration, at the Menil Collection and the Rothko Chapel. Join us for the premiere of six new chamber works commissioned in response to each season’s theme, by Brent Michael Davids; Jocelyn C. Chambers & Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton; Zach Redler & Jerre Dye; Mark Buller & Euan Tait; J.E. Hernández; and Shih-Hui Chen.

COMING UP! MUSIC AND MEDITATIONS

A concert in celebration of six years of Seeking the Human Spirit

One highlight is Chen’s A Stillness That Moves, which focuses on Faith and takes its inspiration from the motto of the Rothko Chapel: a stillness that moves/a quiet disruption/a sanctuary for the seeker / all are welcome Written for soprano, baritone, clarinet, viola, and percussion, this site-specific theatrical work incorporates multiple languages into its text and, like the Rothko, seeks to foster meaningful connections and emphasize unity among religions and cultures.

“While composing this piece during my spring 2022 residency at the Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy, I asked the international fellows living and working there to provide

translations in the languages they speak,” Chen shares. “Their involvement in this project not only commemorates our wonderful community, but also highlights our diversity and unity, in line with Rothko Chapel’s vision and spirit.” —Alisa Magallón, Associate Director of Programming and Engagement, Community and Learning

HGO IN THE CLASSROOM

A new residency at Kinder HSPVA

HGO’s Bauer Family High School Voice Studio program, held each season at the Wortham, nurtures the gifts of high school students who exhibit remarkable potential, work ethic, and interest in pursuing vocal performance at the collegiate level. As HGO strives to grow the impact and reach of its successful programs, we are delighted to bring the BFHSVS model to a larger population of students.

In a unique partnership with HISD’s Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, HGO is leading 70(!) sessions modeled after BFHSVS for HSPVA’s junior and senior vocal students throughout the 2022-23 school year. Activities include masterclasses, career talks, audition techniques, dramaturgy, acting, vocal health classes, and more, giving HSPVA students the opportunity to explore the wide field of opera and range of careers with HGO teaching artists, staff including HGO General Director Khori Dastoor, guest artists, and Butler Studio artists. —Alisa Magallón, Associate Director of Programming and Engagement, Community and Learning

Join us! Music and Meditations takes place at the Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel on May 18; performances at both sites start at 6 p.m., followed by a 7:45 p.m. labyrinth walk designed by Houston artist Reginal Adams at Menil Park. Free. For information, visit HGO.org/STHS.

For inquires on residencies and how to bring a program like this to your school or district, contact Community@HGO.org.

The Rothko Chapel

BFHSVS class of 2023

SEEKING THE HUMAN SPIRIT, 2017-2023

A look back at an incredible six years exploring universal spiritual themes in opera:

Community impact year end review

An Exploring Your Creative Identity workshop

Carols on the Green

Fiesta Guadalupana

Reginald Adams's labyrinth for The Wreckers

A walking recital at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

A panel on Turandot at Asia Society Texas

Carols on the Green

Transforming the Mind and Spirit at MATCH

The Art of Intimacy workshop

In February, HGO visited the Evelyn Rubenstein Jewish Community Center to present the company’s first ever sensory-friendly performance: our Opera to Go! touring production, Monkey and Francine in the City of Tigers

Sensory-friendly performances are designed to create a welcoming and supportive environment for families with members on the autism spectrum and others with sensory sensitivities, allowing for a more relaxed and comfortable experience for all.

An enthusiastic audience of 200, including families and people of all ages, came out for Monkey and Francine! "My son doesn't

COMMUNITY AND LEARNING FUNDERS

Guarantors

The Brown Foundation, Inc.

William Randolph Hearst Foundation

Mellon Foundation

Sara and Bill Morgan

The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

Grand Underwriter

Judy and Richard Agee

City of Houston through the  Miller Theatre Advisory Board

Mathilda Cochran

ConocoPhillips

H-E-B

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo ™

The Powell Foundation

Underwriters

Ruth and Ted Bauer Family Foundation

Shelly Cyprus

HGO FOSTERS INCLUSION IN THE ARTS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ERJCC

Audiences loved our first sensory-friendly performance!

communicate well, but he was able to tell me he wanted to see the opera again,” shared one parent. "The fidget toys were great,” shared another, “and it was nice to go to a show with a safe, nonjudgmental environment.”

Since 1936, the ERJCC has been a place where people come together for friendship, affiliation, and socialization. "We have a wide variety of programming that we feel appeals to the whole community,” says Family Engagement Program Coordinator Andrea Wolfe. “We want the ERJCC to be a warm, welcoming environment to everyone who walks through our doors; no matter if you are Jewish, not Jewish, whatever you look like, whatever you sound like, whoever

Collaborations with our wonderful community partners, like the ERJCC, give the HGO team the chance to mint brand-new opera fans. "My daughter asked me to take her to a ‘real,’ full performance opera,” a parent told us after Monkey and Francine. “I'm thrilled!"

Chelsea

Stay up to date on HGO in the community! Visit HGO.org/Community-and-Learning.

Rosemary Malbin

Dr. Laura Marsh

National Endowment for the Arts

Alan and Frank York

Sponsors

Adrienne Bond

M. David Lowe and Nana Booker  Booker · Lowe Gallery

Mr. and Mrs. Lester P. Burgess

The Lawrence E. Carlton, MD,  Endowment Fund

The Cockrell Family Fund

James J. Drach Endowment Fund

Trish Freeman and Bruce Patterson

William E. and Natoma Harvey Charitable Trust

Albert and Ethel Herzstein Foundation

Houston Grand Opera Guild

Lee Huber

Ms. Rachel Le and Mr. Lam Hguy

Dr. Laura Marsh

Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Pancherz

Vivian L. Smith Foundation

Texas Commission on the Arts

Union Pacific Foundation

The activities of Houston Grand Opera are supported in part by funds provided by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.

The NEXUS Initiative

Community and Learning programs including Student Performances and HGO’s performances at Miller Outdoor Theatre, are supported through the NEXUS initiative, which is made possible by:

The Brown Foundation, Inc.

The Wortham Foundation, Inc.

Shell USA, Inc.

you are, we want you to feel like the J is a home for you."

Duncan

The Impresarios Circle is Houston Grand Opera’s premier donor recognition society. These vanguard supporters who provide annual support of at least $100,000 are instrumental to HGO’s success. For information, please contact Greg Robertson, chief philanthropy officer, at 713-546-0274 or GRobertson@HGO.org.

JUDY AND RICHARD AGEE

HGO subscribers for more than two decades, Judy and Dick are ardent believers in the power of storytelling through words and music. They partnered with the Archdiocese of GalvestonHouston Inner-City Catholic Schools to expand student access to HGO Community and Learning programs. Judy and Dick, the founder and chairman of Wapiti Energy LLC and Bayou Well Holdings Company LLC, also support mainstage productions. Dick is a member of the HGO Board of Directors.

ROBIN ANGLY AND MILES SMITH

HGO subscribers Robin and Miles joined the Founders Council in 2010. The company is honored to have Robin on the HGO Board of Directors and as a member of HGO’s Laureate Society. The couple is very familiar with the view from the HGO stage as well—both are former singers in the HGO Chorus. Robin and Miles have been donors to HGO special events, the Young Artists Vocal Academy, and HGO’s Ring cycle. They are charter members of the Impresarios Circle and generously underwrite a mainstage production each season.

THE BROWN FOUNDATION, INC.

The Brown Foundation, Inc., established in 1951 by Herman and Margarett Root Brown and George R. and Alice Pratt Brown, has been a treasured partner of HGO since 1984. Based in Houston, the Foundation distributes funds principally for education, community service, and the arts, especially the visual and performing arts. HGO is tremendously grateful for The Brown Foundation’s leadership support, which has been critical to the company’s unprecedented growth and success in recent years. The Brown Foundation was among the lead contributors to HGO’s Hurricane Harvey and COVID-19 recovery efforts.

SARAH AND ERNEST BUTLER

HGO subscribers for over 35 years, Sarah and Ernest made the largest gift to HGO in company history in 2023, creating a new fund within the HGO Endowment valued at $22 million and becoming the naming partner for the Sarah and Ernest Butler Houston Grand Opera Studio. They are also the lead underwriters for the company’s digital artistic programming, and have generously endowed three chairs at HGO: those of HGO Artistic and Music Director Patrick Summers, Chorus Director Richard Bado, and HGO Orchestra Concertmaster Denise Tarrant. Ernest and Sarah reside in Austin and are longtime supporters of Ballet Austin, Austin Opera, Austin Symphony Orchestra, the Texas Cultural Trust, and the University of Texas Butler School of Music, which has carried their name since 2008. Sarah and Ernest are world travelers, and they never miss an opportunity to see opera in the cities they visit.

ANNE AND ALBERT CHAO

Anne and Albert have been subscribers and supporters of HGO for the past two decades. While serving as president and CEO of Westlake Corporation, Albert finds time for numerous cultural causes. He is a member of the HGO Board of Directors and was the co-chair of Inspiring Performance—The Campaign for Houston Grand Opera. Over the years, the Chaos have sponsored HGO special events, the Butler Studio, Song of Houston, and mainstage productions. The couple has also supported the HGO Endowment. In April they chaired the record-breaking Opera Ball.

LOUISE G. CHAPMAN

Louise Chapman of Corpus Christi, Texas, a longtime supporter of HGO, recently joined the HGO Board of Directors. Louise’s late husband, John O. Chapman, was a south Texas agricultural businessman and philanthropist. In addition to HGO, the Chapmans have supported numerous organizations in health, education, and the arts, including Texas A&M University, the Corpus Christi Symphony, and the Art Museum of South Texas. Louise and HGO Trustee Connie Dyer have known each other since they were college roommates at The University of Texas.

THE ROBERT AND JANE CIZIK FOUNDATION

The Cizik family name is synonymous with passion, devotion, and service to the people of Houston. The Ciziks have always been associated with hard work, high achievement, inspirational leadership, and love for their family. Survived by his wife, Jane, Robert Cizik spearheaded the fundraising and building of HGO’s home, the Wortham Theater Center. The Robert and Jane Cizik Foundation gives generously to many educational institutions and charitable organizations, including UTHealth, Harvard University, the University of Houston, and the University of Connecticut. In 2017, the School of Nursing at UTHealth was re-named the Jane and Robert Cizik School of Nursing at UTHealth in recognition of the family’s dedicated support.

MATHILDA COCHRAN

Mathilda is a native of New Orleans and a long-time resident of Houston. She is a retired museum educator, having served for many years as Manager of the Docent and Tour Program at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, as well as a volunteer with Taping for the Blind, Inc. She and her late husband, Mike, created the Cochran Family Professorship in Earth and Environmental Sciences to support Tulane University’s School

Robin Angly, Chair

of Science and Engineering. Mathilda currently serves as a member of the HGO Board of Directors and is chair of the Community and Learning Committee. She has been an HGO subscriber since the 1986-87 season.

CONOCOPHILLIPS

For over 40 years, ConocoPhillips has supported various programs at HGO, from special events to mainstage productions, including a long-standing tradition of supporting HGO’s season-opening operas. In 2009, the company gave a major multi-year grant to establish ConocoPhillips New Initiatives, a far-reaching program that allows the Opera to develop new and innovative education and community collaboration programs. Kelly Rose, general counsel and SVP, serves on the HGO Board of Directors.

MOLLY AND JIM CROWNOVER

Molly and Jim have been HGO subscribers for over 30 years and are members of the Impresarios Circle and Laureate Society. Jim has been a member of HGO’s Board of Directors since 1987 including service as chairman from 2016-18 and on the Executive, Governance, Development, and Finance Committees. In 1998, Jim retired from a 30-year career with McKinsey & Company, Inc. and has served on myriad corporate and non-profit boards including Rice University (past board chair), United Way (past campaign chair), and most recently as M.D. Anderson Foundation President. Molly continues to serve on the Butler Studio and Special Events Committees. She also serves as Chairman of The Shepherd Society at Rice University and on the Houston Ballet Board of Trustees (past Executive Committee and Ballet Ball chair). Molly and Jim have chaired HGO's Concert of Arias, been honorees at Concert of Arias and Opening Night Dinner, and chaired this season's Opening Night.

THE CULLEN FOUNDATION

For more than three decades, The Cullen Foundation has been a vital member of the HGO family. Established in 1947, the Foundation has more than a half-century history of giving generously to education, health care, and the arts in Texas, primarily in the Greater Houston area. The Opera is very grateful for the Foundation’s longstanding leadership support of HGO’s Family and Holiday Opera Series, as well as special support for HGO’s COVID-19 recovery efforts.

THE CULLEN TRUST FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS

The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts has been a lead underwriter of HGO’s mainstage season for nearly 30 years. The Trust was established from assets of The Cullen Foundation to specifically benefit Texas performing arts institutions, particularly those within the Greater Houston area. In recent years, The Cullen Trust has provided lead support for memorable productions including HGO’s Family and Holiday Opera Series, and made a leadership contribution to HGO’s Hurricane Harvey recovery fund, as well as a generous gift to HGO’s COVID-19 recovery efforts.

CONNIE DYER

Connie Dyer has been an important member of the HGO family for decades. Connie loves HGO Opening Night festivities and the Concert of Arias. She is a leadership donor, Trustee, and a member of the Laureate Society and the Founders Council for Artistic Excellence. With her late husband Byron, she has hosted receptions for HGO Patrons in their beautiful home in Santa Fe. They were early and enthusiastic underwriters for HGO’s Seeking the Human Spirit initiative, and most recently Connie made a grand grand guarantor pledge for HGO’s COVID Relief Campaign. HGO Board Member Louise Chapman and Connie were college roommates at the University of Texas, Austin.

FROST BANK

Frost Bank has been a supporter of HGO for over a decade, helping bring to life some of the world’s most treasured operas, as well as supporting new works including the 2019 world premiere of The Phoenix. Since Frost’s founding in 1868, the bank has invested in the communities it serves through hard work, customer service, and support of the arts, education, economic development, and health and human services. David LePori, Regional President, serves on the HGO Board of Directors.

DRS.

LIZ GRIMM AND JACK ROTH

HGO subscribers since the 2013–14 season, Liz and Jack have both committed themselves to cancer research and patient care through their work at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Jack is a member of the HGO Board of Directors and serves as Butler Studio Committee Chair. Liz and Jack were generous underwriters of HGO’s historic, first-ever Ring cycle and lead supporters of HGO’s German repertoire, including Elektra. Additionally, Liz and Jack chaired the 2018 Opera Ball and last season’s Concert of Arias.

NANCY HAYWOOD

Long-time Trustee Nancy Haywood loves HGO, and her particular passion is the Butler Studio and supporting young artists. Her enthusiasm is infectious. This season Nancy is underwriting second-year Butler Studio artist Luke Sutliff. Her love for supporting young artists goes beyond HGO to the Houston Boy Choir, where she is one of their most ardent benefactors and Board Members. Nancy is a member of HGO’s Butler Studio Committee, Philanthropy Committee, and the Laureate Society. Most recently, she made a guarantor pledge for HGO’s COVID Relief Campaign. Nancy and her late husband, Dr. Ted Haywood, approached every opera performance as a “date night.” Ted Haywood was a prince.

WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST FOUNDATION

The William Randolph Hearst Foundation is a national philanthropic resource for organizations working in the fields of culture, education, health, and social services. The Foundation identifies and funds outstanding nonprofits to ensure that people of all backgrounds in the United States have the opportunity to build healthy, productive, and inspiring lives. A dedicated supporter of HGO, the Foundation is a leading advocate for the Opera's Community and Learning initiatives. The continued support from the Foundation makes it possible for Houstonians of all ages to explore, engage, and learn through the inspiring art of opera.

H-E-B

For over 115 years, H-E-B has contributed to worthy causes throughout Texas and Mexico, a tradition proudly maintained today. And for over 20 years, H-E-B has been a lead supporter of the Opera's arts education programs for Houston area students. H-E-B’s partnership helps over 70,000 young people experience the magic of opera each season. Always celebrating Houston’s cultural diversity, H-E-B helped make possible last season’s The Snowy Day and this past December's El Milagro del Recuerdo.

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA ENDOWMENT, INC.

Established and incorporated in 1982, the Houston Grand Opera Endowment (HGOE) is a vital financial management tool that ensures HGO has a reliable, regular source of income. Today, the Endowment contains over 50 named funds, both unrestricted and restricted, and annually distributes 4.5 percent of the Endowment’s average market value to HGO, making it the largest single annual funder of the Opera. HGOE leadership includes Chair Yolanda Knull, Senior Chair Tom Rushing, and several members of the HGO Board of Directors.

HOUSTON METHODIST

For over ten years, Houston Grand Opera has partnered with Houston Methodist, the official health care provider for HGO. Houston Methodist’s Center for Performing Arts Medicine (CPAM) is the only center of its kind in the country, comprising a specialized group of more than 100 physicians working collaboratively to address the specific demands placed upon performing artists. In addition to the first-rate medical care CPAM provides HGO artists, Houston Methodist also generously supports HGO’s mainstage season and partners frequently on Community and Learning collaborations. HGO is fortunate to have Dr. Warren Ellsworth and Dr. Apurva Thekdi serve as Houston Methodist’s corporate trustees.

HUMPHREYS FOUNDATION

Based in Liberty, Texas, Humphreys Foundation has been a major underwriter of HGO’s mainstage season since 1980. Geraldine Davis Humphreys (d. 1961), a member of the pioneer Hardin family of Liberty, Texas, bequeathed her estate to Humphreys Foundation, which was formally established in 1959. The Foundation provides support for performing arts in Texas and college scholarship funding for students in the arts. Linda Bertman, Louis Paine, and Jeff

Paine serve as trustees of Humphreys Foundation. This season, the Foundation is supporting two family-friendly productions, El Milagro del Recuerdo and The Marriage of Figaro

ELIZABETH AND RICHARD HUSSEINI

We like to think that HGO helped “set the stage” for Elizabeth and Richard Husseini's love story. When a set malfunction at the end of the first act of HGO’s The Flying Dutchman forced Maestro to re-start the opera from the top, the two seatmates bonded in their shared delight that they got to hear more Wagner! The two got engaged one year later (at HGO, of course). Richard is a tax partner at Kirkland & Ellis, a generous HGO corporate supporter, and serves on both the HGO Board of Directors and the HGO Endowment Board. Elizabeth retired from Baker Botts as a corporate and securities partner and devotes her attention to family and community matters, including Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston, Preservation Houston, the Junior League, and River Oaks Baptist School, which the Husseinis' two sons attend. Enthusiastic supporters of the young artists and alumni of the Butler Studio, the couple chaired the 2019 Concert of Arias. This season, the Husseinis are generously underwriting the U.S. premiere of The Wreckers as well as Butler Studio alumna Tamara Wilson's much-anticipated role debut in the titular role of Tosca

DONNA KAPLAN AND RICHARD LYDECKER

Richard Lydecker has been an HGO subscriber and supporter for more than three decades. He is a member of the HGO Board of Directors and Impresarios Circle. Richard has great passion for opera, especially Wagner, and he and Donna were underwriters for HGO’s Ring cycle. They are also special events sponsors, supporting Opera Ball and Concert of Arias.

CLAIRE LIU AND JOE GREENBERG

Claire and Joe have subscribed to HGO for many seasons and are members of HGO’s Founders Council for Artistic Excellence. Claire assumed the role of Chair of the HGO Board of Directors in August 2022. She is newly retired from LyondellBassell Industries where she led the corporate finance team, and was formerly a managing director with Bank of America. Joe is founder and CEO of Alta Resources, L.L.C., a private company involved in the development of shale oil and gas resources in North America. Claire and Joe support many organizations, with particular emphasis on educational organizations including YES Prep and Beatrice Mayes Charter School. An avid runner, Claire has completed a marathon in all 50 states.

BETH MADISON

This season marks Beth’s 23rd as an HGO subscriber. HGO has had the honor of her support since 2004. Past chair of the HGO Board of Directors, she is a member of the HGO Board of Directors, serves on the Butler Studio Committee, and is an active member of HGO’s

Founders Council. She was the honoree at the 2017 Concert of Arias. Beth generously supports the Butler Studio, special events, and mainstage operas. Beth has been inducted into the Greater Houston Women’s Hall of Fame and serves on the University of Houston System Board of Regents.

LAURA AND BRAD MCWILLIAMS

HGO subscribers for 35 years, Laura and Brad have been passionate advocates for HGO. A longtime Trustee, Laura has served on the HGO Finance Committee, chaired the Annual Fund Drive, and serves on the Laureate Society Council. Laura and Brad’s generosity has impacted almost every area of the company including HGO Special Events – they chaired the 32nd Annual Concert of Arias in 2020. They most recently created the McWilliams Fund for Artistic Excellence to underwrite HGO’s mainstage operas for the 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25 seasons.

PAUL MARSDEN AND JAY ROCKWELL

Paul Marsden and Jay Rockwell became HGO Trustees in the 2020-21 season and generously increased their support to join the Impresarios Circle in late 2021. A member of the HGO Board of Directors, Paul is President of Bechtel’s Energy global business unit in Houston and has served in key leadership roles for over two decades, dating back to his start with the company in London in 1995. His background as a pianist comes in handy as he accompanies his partner Jay Rockwell, an accomplished operatic baritone, who has sung with the Houston Grand Opera Chorus in recent productions.

THE ROBERT AND JANICE MCNAIR FOUNDATION

Janice and the late Bob McNair, longtime HGO subscribers and supporters, are well known for their incredible philanthropy and for bringing the NFL back to Houston. Bob was a former chair of the HGO Board of Directors (1995-97). Through the family’s passionate support of students, young entrepreneurs, medical research, and the community, The Robert and Janice McNair Foundation is transforming some of the biggest challenges our nation faces today into the solutions of tomorrow. As the lead supporter of HGO’s Holiday Opera Series, the McNair Foundation makes it possible for thousands of students and families to experience shorter length family-friendly operas during the holiday season each year.

M.D. ANDERSON FOUNDATION

The M.D. Anderson Foundation has provided general operating support to HGO for more than 30 years. The Foundation was established in 1936 by Monroe Dunaway Anderson, whose company, Anderson, Clayton and Co., was the world’s largest cotton merchant. While the Foundation started the Texas Medical Center and was instrumental in bringing to it one of the premier cancer centers in the world, the Foundation’s trustees also looked to improve the wellness of communities through the arts. HGO is privileged to have such a longstanding and committed partner in enhancing the quality of life for all Houstonians.

SARA AND BILL MORGAN

Sara and Bill have been supporting HGO since 2002. Sara is a co-founder of the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, where she currently serves on the board. Bill is a co-founder of the Kinder Morgan companies and the retired vice chairman and president of Kinder Morgan, Inc., and Kinder Morgan Energy Partners, LP. The Morgans support Community and Learning initiatives, HGO’s special events, and mainstage productions, including the Holiday Opera Series. HGO is thrilled to have Sara serve on the HGO Board of Directors and as a member and past chair of the Community and Learning Committee.

NOVUM ENERGY/MARCIA AND ALFREDO VILAS

Founder and President of Novum Energy, Alfredo Vilas serves on the HGO Board of Directors. He is a passionate lover of opera and together with his wife Marcia chaired HGO’s unforgettable “Cielito Lindo” Opera Ball in 2019. The Vilases and Novum Energy have generously supported many operas over the past decade, including all three of HGO’s celebrated mariachi operas, and are proud underwriters for this season’s production of El Milagro del Recuerdo

ALLYSON PRITCHETT

Allyson Pritchett, a member of the HGO Board of Directors, is the Founder & CEO of Bodka Creek Capital, a Houston-based real estate private equity firm with over $100M in assets under management. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor’s in Applied Mathematics & Archaeology from Harvard University. After attending her first opera at HGO last season (Carmen), she joined the Young Patrons Circle and quickly demonstrated her passion for opera by underwriting Angel Blue in La traviata this season.

JILL AND ALLYN RISLEY

Jill and Allyn Risley have been HGO subscribers since the 2003-04 season and are members of the company’s Founders Council. Allyn and Jill have been key influencers of HGO programs for many years, with special affection for our esteemed Butler Studio. They co-sponsor Butler Studio Artist Eric Taylor and faculty member Dr. Stephen King, Director of Vocal Instruction. Allyn is Chairman of Gaztransport & Technigaz (GTT) North America, an engineering company specializing in liquid gas containment systems using cryogenics. Allyn served as Chair of the HGO Board of Directors from 2020 to August 2022 and currently serves as Senior Chair.

GLEN ROSENBAUM

Glen Rosenbaum is a Senior Partner of Tax at Vinson & Elkins. As part of his broad-based tax practice Glen works on behalf of civic and cultural organizations, for which he handles formation, obtaining of tax-exempt status, and various corporate, tax, and business matters, some on a pro bono basis. Glen

received his B.B.A. from the University of Texas and his J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law. He is a Board member of the Texas Taxpayers and Research Association and serves on its Executive Committee, as well as President and Board member of Houston Food Bank Endowment, and a Trustee of the Nathan J. Klein Fund. Glen is a member of HGO’s Board of Directors, serving as its Chairman from 2009-11, and is currently a member of the Finance and Philanthropy Committees. As a long-serving Board member, Glen led a team of Vinson & Elkins lawyers from 1983-87 that represented HGO in connection with the negotiation and drafting of the various development and operating agreements relating to the Wortham Center and the Wortham Center Operating Company. These agreements remain in effect today. This season, Glen co-chaired the record-breaking 35th Annual Concert of Arias

SHELL USA, INC.

Shell USA, Inc. is a leader in the Houston arts community, supporting HGO for over 40 years. Shell USA, Inc.’s leadership support makes opera more accessible to everyone through the NEXUS Initiative for Affordability and inspires young minds with STEM-aligned arts education opportunities like our annual Opera Camps. Shell USA, Inc. was also a major supporter of HGO’s Hurricane Harvey recovery. HGO is honored to have Selda Gunsel, president, Shell Global Solutions, as a member of the Board of Directors, and Christos Angelides, head of energy transition integration, as a Trustee.

DIAN AND HARLAN STAI

Harlan, a member of the HGO Board of Directors, and Dian are charter members of HGO’s Founders Council for Artistic Excellence, and their leadership support includes mainstage productions, the Butler Studio, the HGO Endowment, and special events. The Stais have also sponsored Butler Studio artists and they host annual recitals featuring Butler Studio artists at Mansefeldt, their renowned Fredericksburg ranch. HGO was privileged to recognize Dian and Harlan as the honorees of Opening Night 2008 and the 2014 Concert of Arias

TEXAS COMMISSION ON THE ARTS

The mission of the Texas Commission on the Arts (TCA) is to advance our state economically and culturally by investing in creative projects and programs. TCA supports a diverse and innovative arts community in the state, throughout the nation, and internationally by providing resources to enhance economic development, arts education, cultural tourism, and artist sustainability initiatives. Over the years, TCA has provided invaluable support to many HGO projects, including mainstage productions and Community and Learning education initiatives.

JOHN G. TURNER & JERRY G. FISCHER

John and Jerry, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, travel around the world to experience the best that opera has to offer. HGO subscribers and donors for over a decade, the couple’s leadership support of Wagner’s Ring cycle (2014–17)

was the largest gift ever made to HGO for a single production. John, a shareholder at Turner Industries Group, is a member of the HGO Board of Directors and past chair of the Butler Studio Committee. Jerry is a board member of Baton Rouge Symphony Orchestra. In recent years, John and Jerry have supported HGO mainstage productions, the Butler Studio, and special events. They are members of the Founders Council for Artistic Excellence, and John is a member of HGO’s Laureate Society.

VEER VASISHTA

Veer Vasishta is a passionate lover of opera and a proud member of the HGO Board of Directors and Impresarios Circle. Following his education in mechanical engineering and a successful career in finance, Veer co-founded a technology firm based in Montreal, Canada, with staff in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, the U.K., and Asia. He trained as a classical guitarist after a short time playing violin and in a rock band in high school. Veer began been attending HGO performances as soon as he arrived in Houston.

VINSON & ELKINS LLP

HGO has been privileged to have the support of international law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP for 40 years. For more than 100 years, Vinson & Elkins LLP has been deeply committed to empowering the communities in which it serves. It has enriched the cultural vibrancy of Houston by supporting HGO through in-kind legal services and contributions to special events and mainstage productions, including this season’s Tosca. The Opera is honored to have two Vinson & Elkins LLP partners serve on its board of directors: from left, Christopher Bacon and Glen A. Rosenbaum.

MARGARET ALKEK WILLIAMS

Margaret, a longtime singer, possesses a deep affinity for all music, and especially opera, supporting HGO for over 30 years. Currently, Margaret continues her parents’ legacy as chairman of their foundation, where her son Charles A. Williams serves as president. HGO is humbled by Margaret’s incredible generosity and dedication to the company, both as an individual donor and through her family’s foundation. She has endowed the Margaret Alkek Williams Chair, held by HGO General Director Khori Dastoor, and is a member of HGO’s Laureate Society. A valued member of the HGO Board of Directors, Margaret was the honoree of the 2009 Opera Ball and chairman of the 2014 Ball, and she generously chaired the 2018 Hurricane Harvey benefit Concert HGO and Plácido: Coming Home!

THE WORTHAM FOUNDATION, INC.

In the 1980s, the Wortham Foundation contributed $20 million to lead the capital campaign for the Wortham Theater Center, guided by businessman Gus S. Wortham’s early recognition of the vital role of the arts in making Houston an appealing place to live and work. During their lifetimes, Gus and his wife, Lyndall, were dedicated to improving the lives of Houstonians. The Foundation continues to support the Opera through

the Wortham Foundation Permanent Endowment and generous annual operating support. This leadership support has been vital to HGO’s growth and commitment to excellence. The Wortham Foundation’s support of HGO’s Hurricane Harvey recovery helped to bring the company back home, and its special support of HGO's COVID-19 recovery efforts have helped us come back stronger than ever.

LYNN WYATT

Lynn’s generosity touches every aspect of HGO. She is a Lifetime Trustee of HGO and serves as the vice chairman of the HGO Board of Directors. She chaired HGO’s Golden Jubilee Gala in 2005. Oscar Wyatt endowed The Lynn Wyatt Great Artist Fund in 2010, honoring Lynn’s service to the

ANNUAL SUPPORT

company and dedication to bringing the world’s best operatic artists to HGO, and she was the honoree at the 2010 Opera Ball. Lynn and Oscar have been lead supporters of a number of HGO productions and programs, including the multiyear company-wide initiative Seeking the Human Spirit.

Houston Grand Opera Trustees and Patrons Circle members support the Opera with annual donations of $10,000 or $5,000, respectively, and make possible the incredible work of HGO. Trustees and Patrons enjoy many benefits at the Opera, including Masterson Green Room privileges during performance intermissions, behind-the-scenes experiences, personalized ticket service, two tickets to all open dress rehearsals, Opera Guild membership, a discount on Opera Guild Boutique purchases, and much more. For information on joining as a Trustee or Patron, please contact David Krohn, director of philanthropy, at 713-980-8685 or DKrohn@HGO.org.

CHAIR, DONOR ENGAGEMENT COMMITTEE

Ms. Gwyneth Campbell, Chair, Donor Engagement Committee

TRUSTEE—$10,000 OR MORE

Christopher Bacon and Craig Miller

Mr. and Mrs. Frank N. Barnes

Blanche S. and Robert C. Bast, Jr., MD

Mr. Jack Bell

Dr. James A. Belli and Dr. Patricia Eifel

Stephanie and Dom Beveridge

Dr. Dennis Berthold and  Dr. Pamela Matthews

Dr. Michael and Susan Bloome

Adrienne Bond

Nancy and Walt Bratic

Mr. Stephen Brossart and Mr. Gerrod George

Dr. Janet Bruner

Mollie and Wayne Brunetti

Elise Bungo and Eric Rodriguez"

Mr. and Mrs. Lester P. Burgess

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Burleson

Mrs. Carol Butler

Drs. Ian and Patricia Butler

Ms. Gwyneth Campbell and  Mr. Joseph L. Campbell

Mr. and Mrs. Beto Cardenas

Patricia and Jess Carnes

Mr. Eliodoro Castillo and Dr. Eric McLaughlin

Dr. Peter Chang and Hon. Theresa Chang

Mr. Robert N. Chanon

Mr. Anthony Chapman

Cheryl and Michael Clancy

Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Clarke

Julie and Bert Cornelison

Mr. Robert L. Cook and  Mrs. Giovanna Imperia

Mr. and Mrs. Hiram Davis

Anna M. Dean

Dr. and Mrs. Roupen Dekmezian

Ms. Elisabeth DeWitts

Valerie and Tracy Dietrich

Jeanette and John DiFilippo

Johanna and Stephen Donson

Dr. Allen Deustch and Mrs. Luci Runte

Anna and Brad Eastman

Perry Ewing

Mary Ann and Larry Faulkner

Carol Lay Fletcher

Wanda and Roger Fowler

Ms. Marion Freeman and  Ms. Caroline Freeman

Patricia B. Freeman and  Bruce Patterson

Monica Fulton

Gina and Scott Gaille

Dr. and Mrs. Ronald Galfione

Mr. and Mrs. Scott J. Garber

Gerard and Christine Gaynor

Dr. and Mrs. David P. Gill

Mrs. Geraldine C. Gill

Mr. Wesley Goble and Mr. Barry Liss

Sandy and Lee Godfrey

Ms. Dianne L. Gross

Mr. and Mrs. Melvyn Hetzel

Rosalie and William M. Hitchcock

Dr. Patricia Holmes

Lee M. Huber

Sarah Johnson

Linda Katz

Ann and Stephen Kaufman

Mr. Mark Klitzke and Dr. Angela Chen

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Knull III

Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Kolb

Ann Koster

Elizabeth and Bill Kroger

Mr. and Mrs. Blair Labatt

Mr. and Mrs. Randall B. Lake

Mr. Alfred W. Lasher III

Dr. and Mrs. Ernst Leiss

Max Levit

Ms. Bernice Lindstrom

Ms. Michele Malloy

Ms. Diane M. Marcinek

Mary Marquardsen

Dorothy McCaine

Mr. and Mrs. D. Patrick McCelvey

Ms. Janice McNeil

Jan and Nathan Meehan

Ginger Menown

Sharyn and Jerry Metcalf

Chadd Mikulin and Amanda Lenertz

Dr. Indira Mysorekar Mills and Dr. Jason Mills

Dr. and Mrs. William E. Mitch

Marsha L. Montemayor

Mr. and Mrs. Shahin Naghavi

Erik B. Nelson and Terry R. Brandhorst

John Newton and Peggy Cramer

Beverly and Staman Ogilvie

Susan and Edward Osterberg

Mr. and Mrs. Michael J. Pancherz

Ms. Jeanne M. Perdue

Mr. Mark Poag and Dr. Mary Poag

Dr. Angela Rechichi-Apollo

Ms. Katherine Reynolds

Mr. Serge Ribot

Janet and Ed Rinehart

Mr. and Mrs. Walter Ritchie

Mr. Mike Rydin

Adel and Jason Sander

Judy and Henry Sauer

Ms. Jill Schaar and Mr. George Caflisch

Mr. Vance Senter and Mrs. Jane Senter

Mrs. Helen P. Shaffer

Hinda Simon

Ms. Janet Sims

Diana Strassmann and Jeffrey Smisek

Bruce Stein

Kathy and Richard Stout

Mrs. Carolyn Taub

Mr. Minas and Dr. Jennifer Tektiridis

Ann Tornyos

James M. Trimble and Sylvia Barnes

Mr. and Mrs. John Untereker

Mr. and Mrs. Alexander van Veldhoven

Mr. and Mrs. Robert N. Wakefield

Mary Lee and Jim Wallace

Mr. and Mrs. Jay Watkins

Mr. and Mrs. K.C. Weiner

Mr. and Mrs. David S. Wolff

Mr. and Mrs. C. Clifford Wright, Jr.

Mr. Trey M. Yates

Mr. Hugh Zhang and Ms. Lulu Tan

Nina and Michael Zilkha

1 Anonymous

YOUNG TRUSTEE—$5,000 OR MORE

Emily Bivona and Ryan Manser

Mr. Anthony Chapman

Mr. and Mrs. Damian Gill

Meredith and Joseph Gomez

Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Hanno

Ms. Kathleen Henry

Mr. Peter Hermosa

Ms. Ellen Liu and Ms. Ilana Walder-Biesanz

Mr. Andrew Pappas

Drs. Mauricio Perillo and Luján Stasevicius

Lauren Randle

Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Ritter

Dr. Nico Roussel and Ms. Teresa Procter

Jennifer Salcich

Mr. Michael Steeves

Drs. Ishwaria and Vivek Subbiah

Mr. and Mrs. Steven Tang

Dr. Yin Yiu

1 Anonymous

NATIONAL TRUSTEE—$5,000 OR MORE

Ms. Alissa Adkins, Corpus Christi, TX

Ms. Jacqueline S. Akins, San Antonio, TX

Mrs. Estella Hollin-Avery, Fredericksburg, TX

Jorge Bernal and Andrea Maher,  Bogota, Colombia

Mr. Tom Burley and Mr. Michael Arellano,  Philadelphia, PA

Dr. Dennis Berthold and Dr. Pamela Matthews,  College Station, TX

Mr. Richard E. Boner and Ms. Susan Pryor,  Austin, TX

Mr. Bryce Cotner, Austin, TX

Dr. Thomas S. DeNapoli and  Mr. Mark Walker, San Antonio, TX

Mr. James M. Duerr and  Dr. Pamela Hall, San Antonio, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Evans, Coldspring, TX Jack and Marsha Firestone, Miami, FL

Mr. Charles Hanes, San Jose, CA

Brian Hencey and Charles Ross Jr., Austin, TX

Edward and Patricia Hymson,  San Francisco, CA

Mrs. Judy Kay, Dallas, TX

Dr. and Mrs. Morton Leonard Jr.,  Galveston, TX

Cathleen C. and Jerome M. Loving, Bryan, TX

Barbara and Camp Matens, Baton Rogue, LA

Mr. Kenton McDonald, Corpus Christi, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Spencer Mehrens, Longview, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Misamore, Sedona, AZ

Mr. John P. Muth, Wimberly, TX

Ms. Claire O'Malley, San Antonio, TX

Ms. Wanda A. Reynolds, Austin, TX

Dr. Sid Roberts and Mrs. Catherine Roberts,  Lufkin, TX

James and Nathanael Rosenheim,  College Station, TX

Mr. Donald Wertz, Austin, TX

Ms. Charlotte Williams, Killeen, TX

Valerie and David Woodcock,  College Station, TX

PATRONS CIRCLE—$5,000 OR MORE

Ms. Jacquelyn M. Abbott

Mr. W. Kendall Adam

Mrs. Norah G. Adams

Mrs. Nancy C. Allen

Mr. and Mrs. Orlando Alvarado

Alfredo Tijerina and JP Anderson

Shaza and Mark Anderson

Dr. Julia Andrieni and Dr. Robert Phillips

Chris and Michelle Angelides

Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Ardell

Bill A. Arning and Aaron Skolnick

Maida Asofsky

Mr. Neely Atkinson

Kate Baker

Nancy and Paul Balmert

Dr. Roger Barascout

Mr. William Bartlett

Mr. and Mrs. James Becker

Drs. Robert S. and Nancy Benjamin

Dr. and Mrs. Joel M. Berman

Drs. Henry and Louise Bethea

Mr. and Mrs. Stanley C. Beyer

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen D. Bickel

Dr. Joan Hacken Bitar

Dr. Jerry L. Bohannon

Mr. Jeffery Bosworth and  Mr. Timothy Bammel

Mr. Al Brende and Mrs. Ann Bayless

Mr. Chester Brooke and Dr. Nancy Poindexter

Dr. Luis Camacho

Ms. Marion Cameron

Mr. Patrick Carfizzi

Mr. and Mrs. Thierry Caruso

Mrs. John R. Castano

Drs. Danuta and Ranjit Chacko

Dr. Beth Chambers and

Mr. J. Michael Chambers

Ms. Nada Chandler

Dr. Cindy Childress and Mr. Jack Charles

Mr. and Mrs. Jack Christiansen

Janet Clark

Ms. Donna Collins

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Collier

Dr. and Mrs. J. Michael Condit

Dr. Nancy I. Cook

Ms. Sasha Davis

Dr. and Mrs. William F. Donovan

Mr. and Mrs. Larry Dooley

Mr. James Dorough-Lewis and Mr. Jacob Carr

Dr. and Mrs. Giulio Draetta

Kellie Elder and David Halbert

Mrs. James A. Elkins III

Parrish N. Erwin Jr.

Ms. Thea M. Fabio and Mr. Richard Merrill

Ms. Ann L. Faget

Mr. Brian Faulkner and Ms. Jackie Macha

Ms. Vicki Schmid Faulkner

Ms. Ursula Felmet

Ms. Julie Fischer

Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Fish

Mr. John E. Frantz

Drs. Daniel and Jean Freeman

Mr. and Mrs. William B. Freeman Jr.

Dr. Alice Gates and Dr. Wayne Wilner

Dr. Layne O. Gentry

Nancy Glass, M.D. and John Belmont, M.D.

Rhoda Goldberg

Mr. Thomas K. Golden and  Mrs. Susan Baker Golden

Mary Frances Gonzalez

Sue Goott

Mrs. Gwynn F. Gorsuch

Dr. and Mrs. David Y. Graham

Joyce Z. Greenberg

Dr. and Mrs. Stephen B. Greenberg

William and Jane Guest

Mr. Walker Hale and Dr. Katherine Hale

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas C. Halsey

Mrs. Mary Hankey

Mr. Frank Harmon III and  The Honorable Melinda Harmon

Mr. and Mrs. A. John Harper III

Ms. Paige Hassall

Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Hewell

Pam Higgins and Tom Jones

Mrs. Ann G. Hightower

Doug Hirsch and Maureen Semple-Hirsch

Deborah and Michael Hirsch

Dr. Holly Holmes

Alan and Ellen Holzberg

Mr. and Mrs. John H. Homier

Dr. and Mrs. Gabriel N. Hortobagyi

Mr. and Mrs. Clay Hoster

Dr. Kevin Hude

Robert and Kitty Hunter

Dr. Alan J. Hurwitz

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Jacob

Mr. and Mrs. Malick Jamal

Ms. Joan Jeffrey

Mr. and Mrs. James K. Jennings, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Basil Joffe

Mr. and Mrs. Anson Jones

Charlotte Jones

Mr. Richard F. Kantenberger

Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Kauffman

Mr. Anthony K.

Mr. and Mrs. George B. Kelly

Mr. and Mrs. Hugh Rice Kelly

Ms. Nancy J. Kerby

Mr. and Mrs. Albert Kidd

Ms. Rie Kojima Angeli

Dr. and Mrs. Lary R. Kupor

Dr. Helen W. Lane

Mr. and Mrs. Bryant Lee

Mr. Richard Leibman

Dr. and Mrs. Olivier Lhemann

Ms. Eileen Louvier

Ms. Lynn Luster

Mr. and Mrs. Paul A. Lynn

Renee Margolin

Mark and Juliet Markovich

Mr. Joseph Matulevich

Mr. R. Davis Maxey

Dr. and Mrs. Malcolm Mazow

Shawna and Wynn McCloskey

Gillian and Michael McCord

Mimi Reed McGehee

Elizabeth and Keith McPherson

Wendy and Patrick McWilliams

Kay and Larry Medford

Mrs. Anne C. Mendelsohn

Terry and Hal Meyer

Dr. Douglas D. Miller

Mr. David Montague

Mr. and Mrs. Sidney S. Moran

Ms. Anne Morris

Mr. and Mrs. Stephen J. Morris

Ms. Shannon Morrison

Ms. Linda C. Murray

Franci Neely

Mrs. Bobbie Newman

Maureen O'Driscoll-Levy, M.D.

Drs. John and Karen Oldham

Geoffry H. Oshman

Mrs. Maria Papadopoulos

Adrienn L. Parsons

Susan and Ward Pennebaker

Mr. and Mrs. Harry C. Pinson

Mr. and Mrs. Elvin B. Pippert Jr.

Mrs. Jenny Popatia

Joan and Lou Pucher

Dr. and Mrs. Florante A. Quiocho

Radoff Family

Ms. Judith Raines

Dr. David Reininger and Ms. Laura Lee Jones

Carol F. Relihan

Mr. Robert Richter Jr.

Kate and Greg Robertson

Mrs. Henry K. Roos

Drs. Alejandro and Lynn Rosas

Dr. and Mrs. Franklin Rose

Dr. and Mrs. Sean Rosenbaum

Mrs. Shirley Rose

Mrs. Richard P. Schissler Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Shearouse

Ms. Denmon Sigler and Mr. Peter Chok

Mr. Douglas Skopp

Mr. and Mrs. George Sneed

Karen Somer and David Shein

Kris and Chris Sonneborn

Mr. and Mrs. Aaron J. Stai

Dr. and Mrs. C. Richard Stasney

Mr. Per A. Staunstrup and Ms. Joan Bruun

Richard P. Steele and Mary McKerall

Mrs. Sue Stocks

Mr. Burke Strickland

Dr. Pavlina Suchanova

Drs. Adaani E. Frost and Wadi N. Suki

Ms. Susan L. Thompson

Ms. Sara Tirschwell

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Tobias

Mrs. Ann Gordon Trammell

Dr. Elizabeth Travis and Mr. Jerry Hyde

Mr. and Mrs. Larry Veselka

Greg Vetter and Irene Kosturakis

Ms. Marie-Louise S. Viada

Dean Walker

Mr. and Mrs. M. C. "Bill" Walker III

Geoffrey Walker and Ann Kennedy

Diane and Raymond Wallace

Mr. and Mrs. John Wallace

Mr. Jesse Weir

Ms. Pippa Wiley

Mr. and Mrs. Charles A. Williams

Dr. Courtney Williams

Ms. Jane L. Williams

Loretta and Lawrence Williams

Nancy and Sid Williams

Mr. and Mrs. Scott Wise

Ms. Debra Witges

Dr. Randall Wolf

Mr. and Mrs. John W. Wright

Drs. Edward Yeh and Hui-Ming Chang

Dr. and Mrs. Peirong Yu

John L. Zipprich II

5 Anonymous

YOUNG PATRONS—$2,500 OR MORE

Dr. Matthew J. Bicocca and  Mrs. Yvonne Pham Bicocca

Sarah and Steve Bond

Ms. Lindsay Buchanan

Mr. Sholto Davidson

Mr. Alex Flores and Ms. Morgan Davis

Mr. Albert Garcia Jr.

Ms. Anna Gryska

Mr. Birk Hutchens and Ms. Lauren Alleman

Mr. Daniel Katz

Lady Kimbrell and Mr. Joshua Allison

Mr. Brett Lutz and Mrs. Elizabeth Lutz

Rachael and Daniel MacLeod

Mr. and Mrs. William McElhiney

Emily and Adrian Melendez

Ms. Zoe Miller

Mr. Juan Moreno

Tina and Adam Outland

Ms. Constance Rose-Edwards

Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy Rosen

Mr. Justin Rowinsky and Ms. Catarina Saraiva

Ms. Joan Sanborn and Mr. Dan Parisian

Abby Sanchez-Matzen and Lennart Matzen

Dr. Stephen Keith Sanders

Ms. Emily Schreiber

Emily Schultz and Pavel Blinchik

Mr. Lars Seemann and  Mrs. Nancy Elmohamad

Kelsey Stewart

Ms. Susan Tan

Julia and Jason Wang

Joshua and Rebekah Wilkinson

Mr. and Mrs. Jamie Yarbrough

NATIONAL PATRONS—$2,500 OR MORE

Ms. Cynthia Akagi and Mr. Tom Akagi,  Madison, WI

Mr. and Ms. Avinash Ahuja, Corpus Christi, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas R. Allison, Olympia, WA

Dr. Debra Blatz, Austin, TX

Tom and Kay Brahaney, Midland, TX

Dr. Bernd U. Budelmann, Galveston, TX

Mrs. Carol W. Byrd, Wetumka, OK

Ms. Louise Cantwell, San Antonio, TX

Ms. Susan Carvel, New Braunfels, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Carvelli,  Dhahran, Saudi Arabia

Dr. Raymond Chinn, San Diego, CA

Mr. and Mrs. F. H. Cloudman III, Boulder, CO

Dr. and Mrs. Marvin A. Fishman, NM

Michael Freeburger and Matilda Perkins,  Santa Fe, New Mexico

Mr. Raymond Goldstein and  Ms. Jane T. Welch, San Antonio, TX

Ms. Gabriella M. Guerra, San Antonio, TX

Mr. Mark Jacobs, Dallas, TX

Ms. Gail Jarratt, San Antonio, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Geoffrey S. Kay, Austin, TX

Ms. Alison D. Kennamer and Joyce Kennamer,  Brownsville, TX

Jeff and Gail Kodosky, Austin, TX

Mr. Peter Manis and  Ms. Susan Richman, Chicago, IL

Dr. and Mrs. Stanley Milstein, Olney, MD

Dr. James F. Nelson and  Mr. Yong Zhang, San Antonio, TX

Mr. William Nicholas, Georgetown, TX

John and Elizabeth Nielsen-Gammon,  College Station, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Eliseo Salazar, San Antonio, TX

Mr. Richard See, Lagunas Baru, Costa Rica

Mr. and Mrs. Victor E. Serrato, Pharr, TX

Robert and Nancy Shivers, San Antonio, TX

Ms. Alice Simkins, San Antonio, TX

Eleanor and Philip Straub, Metairie, LA

Ms. Lori Summa, Lancaster, NH

Mr. Kiyoshi Tamagawa and Mr. Bill Dick,  Austin, TX

Dr. and Mrs. Clark D. Terrell, Boerne, TX

Dr. David N. Tobey and Dr. Michelle Berger,  Austin, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Tucker, Bryan, TX

Mr. Tom Turnbull and  Mr. Darrell Smith, Eunice, LA

Mrs. Rons Voogt, Huntsville, TX

Mr. and Mrs. Kirk Weaver, Washington, D.C. Didi and Alan Weinblatt,  San Antonio, TX

Jim and Sydney Wild, San Antonio, TX

HGO DONORS

Houston Grand Opera appreciates all individuals who contribute to the company’s success. Support in any amount is received most gratefully. Our donors share a dedication to supporting the arts in our community, and the generosity of these individuals makes it possible for HGO to sustain world-class opera in the Houston area. For information on becoming a Houston Grand Opera donor, please contact David Krohn, director of philanthropy, at 713-980-8685 or DKrohn@HGO.org.

ASSOCIATE PATRONS— $2,000 OR MORE

Dr. Robert E. Anderson

Mr. and Mrs. V. G. Beghini

Ms. Sonja Bruzauskas and  Mr. Houston Haymon

Mr. and Mrs. M. J. Castelberg

Kenneth T. Chin

Mr. Donald W. Clarke

Vicki Clepper

Mr. Jerry Conry

Ms. Joyce Cramer

Mr. and Mrs. Warren Dean

Cynthia A. Diller

Mr. Alan England

Mr. and Mrs. Blake Eskew

Dr. Wm. David George

Susan Giannatonio and Bruce Winquist

Mr. Michael Gillin and Ms. Pamela Newberry

Mr. and Mrs. Kirk Girouard

Mr. and Mrs. David Guenther

Mr. Claudio Gutierrez

Mr. and Mrs. Dewuse Guyton

Ms. Julia Gwaltney

Dr. and Mrs. Carlos R. Hamilton, Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Michael F. Henderek

Mr. Stanley A. Hoffberger

Mr. and Mrs. Ronald E. Huebsch

Mr. Christopher Huff

Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Jackson

Joan Kaplan

Mr. John Keville

Lynn Lamkin

Mr. Joel Luks

Ana María Martínez

Onalee and Dr. Michael C. McEwen

Mr. James L. McNett

Ms. Maria C. (Macky) Osorio

Mr. Nigel Prior

Ms. Michelle Denise Profit

Suzanne Page-Pryde and Arthur Pryde

Mr. Jack Rooker

Sharon Ruhly

Ramon and Chula Sanchez

Ms. Jo Ann W. Schaffer

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Schufreider

Christopher B. Schulze, M.D.

Dr. Wayne X. Shandera

Virginia Snider and Michael Osborne

Dr. Robert Southard and Mrs. Kristi Southard

Mr. Leon Thomsen and Mrs. Pat Thomsen

Nancy Thompson

Mr. and Mrs. Robert B. Trainer Jr.

Mr. and Mrs. Alton L. Warren

Barbara Wendland - The Cook Foundation

Ms. Susan Trammell Whitfield

Pamela and James Wilhite

Ms. Elizabeth D. Williams

3 Anonymous

CONTRIBUTING FELLOWS—$1,000 OR MORE

Ms. Cecilia Aguilar

Mr. and Mrs. Neil Ken Alexander

Joan Alexander

Mrs. Linda Alexander

Mr. and Mrs. Orlando Alvarado

Mr. Robert K. Arnett Jr.

Ms. Dorothy B. Autin and Mr. Daniel Coleman

Dr. Carlos Bacino

Mrs. Deborah S. Bautch

Mr. Mervyn G. Blieden

Jim and Susan Boone

Mr. Bob F. Boydston

Ms. Julia Cambra

Ms. Mary Clark

Dr. Claude Cech

Mr. and Mrs. James Collins

Mr. and Mrs. Larry Corona

Mr. John Dazey

Peggy DeMarsh

Dr. Susan E. Denson

Dr. and Mrs. R. L. Deter

Mrs. Sarah D. Donaho

Mr. and Mrs. J. Thomas Eubank

Steve and Marie Fay Evnochides

Sylvia B. Fatzer

Mr. and Mrs. Peter J. Ferenz

Mrs. Madeleine Ferris

Mr. David Fleischer

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Fowler

Lucy Gebhart

Mr. Enrico R. Giannetti

Mr. David Gockley

Ruzena Gordon

Mr. Urban Grass

Ms. Janet Graves

Ms. Suzanne Green

Dr. James E. Griffin III and Dr. Margo Denke

Mr. and Mrs. Ira Gruber

Mr. and Mrs. W. F. Guinee

Mr. and Mrs. Philip Gunnels

Mr. Donald Hang

Ms. Rebecca Hansen

Mr. Rawley Penick and  Mrs. Meredith L. Hathorn

Dr. Ralph J. Herring

Ms. Eliane S. Herring

Dr. Sallie T. Hightower

Kay and Michael W. Hilliard

Mr. Edward L. Hoffman

Mr. Steven Jay Hooker

Mr. John Hrncir

Mr. Francisco J. Izaguirre

Mr. Mark E. Jacobs

Mr. and Mrs. John Jordan

Dr. Ngaruiya Kariuki

Lynda and Frank Kelly

Mr. and Mrs. John Lattin

Mr. John Lauber and Ms. Susan M. Coughlin

Ms. Rachel Le and Mr. Lam Nguy

Mrs. Yildiz Lee

Mr. David Leebron and Ms. Ping Sun

Dr. Benjamin Lichtiger

Ms. Nadine Littles

Mrs. Sylvia Lohkamp

Mr. and Mrs. Karl R. Loos

Mr. Robert Lorio

Dr. Robert Louis

Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Y. Lui

Mr. and Mrs. C. Robert Mace

Ms. Nancy Manderson

Dr. and Mrs. Moshe H. Maor

Mr. and Mrs. Ben Marshall

Mr. H. Woods Martin

Ms. Marion Andrus McCollam

Dr. Mary Fae McKay

Alexandra and Frank Meckel

Mrs. Theresa L. Meyer

Mr. Frank Modruson

Ms. Celia Morgan

Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Moynier

Mr. and Mrs. Marvin H. Mueller

Mr. and Mrs. Mike Newman

Mr. Dean Niemeyer and  Dr. Marlowe D. Niemeyer

Ms. Marilyn Oshman

Mr. and Ms. Carl Pascoe

Dr. and Mrs. Richard B. Pesikoff

Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Phillips

Mr. and Mrs. Phil Plant

Dr. V.A. Pittman-Waller

Susie and Jim Pokorski

Ms. Ella W. Prichard

Mr. and Mrs. William Rawl

Mr. and Mrs. Richard Reynolds

Mr. and Mrs. Gene Steve Rhea

Mr. William K. Rice

Mrs. Carol Ritter

Mansel and Brenda Rubenstein

Alan J. Savada

Mr. Alan Schmitz

Kenneth and Deborah Scianna

Mr. Nick Shumway and Mr. Robert Mayott

Mr. Herbert Simons

Jan Simpson

Mr. John S. Skaggs

Ms. Diana Skerl

Mr. and Mrs. Louis. S. Sklar

Ms. Anne Sloan

Len Slusser

Ms. Linda F. Sonier

Mr. and Mrs. George Stark

Mr. Leon Strieder

Mr. and Mrs. Tim Unger

Dr. and Mrs. Lieven J. Van Riet

Darlene Walker and Reagan Redman

Andrea Ward and David Trahan

Mr. Peter J. Wender

J. M. Weltzien

Mrs. Dolores Wilkenfeld

Ms. Irena Witt

Dr. Thomas Woodell II

Drs. William and Huda Yahya Zoghbi

3 Anonymous

CORPORATE, FOUNDATION, AND GOVERNMENT SUPPORTERS

Houston Grand Opera’s corporate, foundation, and government partners make it possible for HGO to create and share great art with our community. We are incredibly proud to work with these organizations and grateful for all they do. For information on joining HGO’s valued team of corporate and foundation supporters, please contact Kelly Finn, director of institutional giving, at 713-546-0265 or KFinn@HGO.org.

CORPORATE, FOUNDATION, GOVERNMENT

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA CORPORATE COUNCIL

Thomas R. Ajamie, Ajamie LLP

Chris Angelides, Shell USA, Inc.

J. Scott Arnoldy, Triten Corporation

Chris Bacon, Vinson & Elkins LLP

C. Mark Baker, Norton Rose Fulbright LLP

Astley Blair, Marine Well  Containment Company

Meg Boulware, Boulware & Valoir

Albert Chao,  Westlake Corporation

Adam Cook, Tokio Marine HCC

Joshua Davidson, Baker Botts L.L.P.

Susan R. Eisenberg, Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Warren Ellsworth, MD, Houston Methodist

Richard Husseini, Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Michelle Huth, Frost Bank

Bill Kroger, Baker Botts L.L.P.

Richard Leibman, FROSCH

David LePori, Frost Bank

Bryce Lindner, Bank of America

Claire Liu, LyondellBasell (Retired)

Craig Miller, Frost Bank

Ward Pennebaker, Pennebaker

Gloria M. Portela, Seyfarth Shaw LLP

Allyn Risley, GTT North America

Susan Rivera, Tokio Marine HCC

Kelly Rose, ConocoPhillips

Glen Rosenbaum, Vinson & Elkins LLP

Silvia Salle, Bank of America

Susan Saurage-Altenloh,  Saurage Marketing Research

Peter D. Seltz, Principal

Apurva Thekdi, MD, Houston Methodist

Ignacio Torras, Tricon Energy

Alfredo Vilas, Novum Energy

CORPORATE SUPPORTERS

GUARANTORS—$100,000 OR MORE

ConocoPhillips †

Frost Bank †

H-E-B †

Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo™ †

Houston Methodist †*

Novum Energy

Vinson & Elkins LLP †*

GRAND UNDERWRITERS— $50,000 OR MORE

Ajamie LLP

Bank of America †

M. David Lowe and Nana Booker

Booker · Lowe Gallery

Kirkland & Ellis LLP

Shell USA, Inc. †

UNDERWRITERS—$25,000 OR MORE

Baker Botts L.L.P. †

Boulware & Valoir

Norton Rose Fulbright LLP † Principal

Saurage Marketing Research

Tokio Marine HCC

Wells Fargo

Westlake Corporation †

SPONSORS—$10,000 OR MORE

CenterPoint Energy

Locke Lord LLP †

MEMBERS—$1,000 OR MORE

Infosys

Maovor, Inc.

Patterson & Sheridan LLP

Union Pacific

University of Houston

Bauer College of Business

IN-KIND CONTRIBUTORS TO OPERATIONS AND SPECIAL EVENTS

UNDERWRITERS—$25,000 OR MORE

Abrahams Oriental Rugs

and Home Furnishings

ALTO

City Kitchen Catering

The Events Company

Jackson & Company Catering

SPONSORS—$15,000 OR MORE

Kirksey Gregg Productions

Magnolia Houston

CO-SPONSORS—$7,500 OR MORE

BCN Taste and Tradition

Elegant Events and Catering by Michael Fort Bend Music Company

Medallion Global Wine Group

BENEFACTORS—$5,000 OR MORE

The Corinthian at Franklin Lofts

David Peck

The Lancaster Hotel

Masterson Design/Mariquita Masterson

Shaftel Diamond Co.

Michaela Greenan, Corporate Council Chair

MEMBERS—$1,000 OR MORE

Brasserie du Parc

Connie Kwan-Wong/CWK Collection Inc.

Dar Schafer Art

Elliott Marketing Group

Ellsworth Plastic Surgery

Gittings Portraiture

Glade Cultural Center

Hayden Lasher

The Hotel ZaZa

La Colombe d'Or Hotel

Las Terrazas Resort & Residences

Lavandula Design

Mayfield Piano Service

Shoocha Photography

FOUNDATIONS AND GOVERNMENT AGENCIES

PREMIER GUARANTOR—

$1,000,000 OR MORE

The Brown Foundation, Inc. †

Houston Grand Opera Endowment Inc. †

The Wortham Foundation, Inc. †

Anonymous

PRINCIPAL GUARANTORS—

$500,000 OR MORE

City of Houston through  Houston Arts Alliance †

The Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts †

GRAND GUARANTORS—

$250,000 OR MORE

The Alkek and Williams Foundation †

Carol Franc Buck Foundation

The Cullen Foundation †

Edgar Foster Daniels Foundation

Humphreys Foundation †

Mellon Foundation †

Texas Commission on the Arts †

Anonymous

GUARANTORS—$100,000 OR MORE

M.D. Anderson Foundation †

The Robert & Jane Cizik Foundation

The Robert and Janice McNair Foundation †

National Endowment for the Arts †

The Sarofim Foundation

William Randolph Hearst Foundation

GRAND UNDERWRITERS—

$50,000 OR MORE

City of Houston through the  Miller Theatre Advisory Board †

John P. McGovern Foundation †

The Powell Foundation †

UNDERWRITERS—$25,000 OR MORE

Ruth and Ted Bauer Family Foundation † Stedman West Foundation †

Vivian L. Smith Foundation

SPONSORS—$10,000 OR MORE

Albert and Ethel Herzstein

Charitable Foundation †

Cockrell Family Fund

Marineau Family Foundation

OPERA America

Sterling-Turner Foundation

William E. and Natoma Pyle

Harvey Charitable Trust †

MEMBERS—$1,000 OR MORE

George and Mary Josephine

Hamman Foundation †

Houston Grand Opera Guild †

Houston Endowment Inc.

Houston Saengerbund

The Nathan J. Klein Fund

* Contribution includes in- kind support † Ten or more years of consecutive support

CORPORATE MATCHING

Baker Hughes Foundation

Bank of America Charitable Foundation

BP Foundation

Chevron Humankind

Coca-Cola North America

ConocoPhillips

Encana

EOG Resources, Inc.

EQT Foundation

ExxonMobil Foundation

Fannie Mae

Hewlett-Packard Company

IBM Corporation

Illinois Tools Works Inc.

LyondellBasell Chemical Company

Macquarie

Microsoft Employee Giving

Nintendo Of America

Quantlab Financial, LLC

Salesforce

Shell USA, Inc. Foundation

The Boeing Company

Union Pacific

Williams Companies

LAUREATE SOCIETY

Helen Wils, Chair

The Laureate Society comprises individuals who have helped ensure the future of Houston Grand Opera by remembering the Opera in their wills, retirement plans, trusts, or other types of estate plans. The Laureate Society does not require a minimum amount to become a member. Planned estate gifts to the Houston Grand Opera Endowment can be used to support general or specific Opera programs. Houston Grand Opera is deeply grateful to these individuals. Their generosity and foresight enable the Opera to maintain its growth and stability, thus enriching the lives of future generations. For information regarding charitable estate gift planning and how it might positively impact you, your loved ones, and Houston Grand Opera, please contact Amanda Neiter, director of legacy giving, at 713-5460216 or ANeiter@HGO.org.

LAUREATE SOCIETY MEMBERS

Ms. Gerry Aitken

Margaret Alkek Williams

Mr. William J. Altenloh and  Dr. Susan Saurage-Altenloh

Robin Angly and Miles Smith

Bill A. Arning and Aaron Skolnick

Mrs. Judie Aronson

Christopher Bacon and Craig Miller

Gilbert Baker

Dr. Saúl and Ursula Balagura

Mr. William Bartlett

Mr. James Barton

Mr. Lary Dewain Barton

Michelle Beale and Dick Anderson

Marcheta Leighton-Beasley

Mrs. Natalie Beller

Dr. James A. Belli and Dr. Patricia Eifel

Mr. and Mrs. Stanley C. Beyer

Dr. Joan Hacken Bitar

Susan Ross Black

Dr. Michael and Susan Bloome

Dr. and Mrs. Jules H. Bohnn

Ms. Lynda Bowman

Mr. and Mrs. Harry W. Bristol

Ms. Zu Dell Broadwater

Catherine Brock

Myra Brown

Mr. Richard S. Brown

Mr. Logan D. Browning

Mr. Richard H. Buffett

Mr. Tom Burley and Mr. Michael Arellano

Mr. Ralph Byle

Ms. Gwyneth Campbell

Roxi Cargill and Peter Weston, M.D. Jess and Patricia Carnes

Ms. Janet Langford Carrig

Sylvia J. Carroll

Ms. Nada Chandler

Mr. Robert N. Chanon

Ms. Virginia Ann Clark

Mathilda Cochran

Mr. William E. Colburn

Mr. and Mrs. Paul L. Comstock

Mr. Jim O. Connell

Mrs. Christa M. Cooper

Mr. Efraín Z. Corzo and Mr. Andrew Bowen

Mr. and Mrs. James W. Crownover

Shelly Cyprus

Mr. Karl Dahm

Dr. Lida Dahm

Mr. Darrin Davis

Ms. Sasha Davis

Ms. Anna M. Dean

Peggy DeMarsh

Ian Derrer and Daniel James

Dr. and Mrs. R. L. Deter

Ms. Elisabeth DeWitts

Connie Dyer

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Evans

Ms. Thea M. Fabio and Mr. Richard Merrill

Ms. Ann L. Faget

Ms. Vicki Schmid Faulkner

Mrs. Thomas Fauntleroy

Carol Sue Finkelstein

Jack and Marsha Firestone

Carol Lay Fletcher

Mr. Bruce Ford

Dr. Donna Fox

Dr. Alice Gates and Dr. Wayne Wilner

Dr. Layne O. Gentry

Mr. Michael B. George

Dr. Wm. David George

Dr. and Mrs. David P. Gill

Lynn Gissel

Mr. Wesley Goble

Mr. David Gockley

Rhoda Goldberg

Leonard A. Goldstein and Helen B. Wils

Mary Frances Gonzalez

Jon Kevin Gossett

Mr. and Mrs. Fred Gott

Mr. and Mrs. Donald Graubart

Claire Liu and Joe Greenberg

Dr. Nichols Grimes

Dr. Ellen R. Gritz and Mr. Milton D. Rosenau Jr.

Mr. Jas A. Gundry

Mr. Claudio Gutierrez

Dr. Robert W. Guynn

Mr. and Mrs. William Haase

Dr. Linda L. Hart

Mrs. Brenda Harvey-Traylor

Nancy Haywood

Teresita and Michael Hernandez

Dr. Ralph J. Herring

Mr. and Mrs. Robert C. Hewell

Mr. Edward L. Hoffman

Gary Hollingsworth and Ken Hyde

Alan and Ellen Holzberg

Mr. Frank Hood

Ms. Ami J. Hooper

Mr. and Mrs. George M. Hricik

Lee M. Huber

Robert and Kitty Hunter

Greg Ingram

Mrs. Lamar Jackson

Brian James

Spencer A. Jeffries and Kim Hawkins

Ms. Charlotte Jones

Cynthia J. Johnson

Ms. Marianne Kah

Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Kauffman

Ann and Stephen Kaufman

Charles Dennis and Steve Kelley

Mr. Anthony K.

Mr. Kyle Kerr

Ms. Virginia E. Kiser

Ann Koster

Dr. Lynn Lamkin

Ms. Michele LaNoue and Mr. Gerald Seidl

Carolyn J. Levy

Mr. and Mrs. W. H. Liesner

Mr. Michael Linkins

Mr. and Mrs. Karl R. Loos

Mrs. Marilyn Lummis

Dr. Jo Wilkinson Lyday

Mr. and Mrs. Paul A. Lynn

Sandy L. Magers

Mrs. Rosemary Malbin

Ms. Michele Malloy

Emily Bivona and Ryan Manser

Mr. and Mrs. J. Landis Martin

Ms. B. Lynn Mathre

Ms. Nancy Wynne Mattison

Dr. and Mrs. Malcolm Mazow

Mrs. Dorothy McCaine

Mrs. Sarah McCollum

Deirdre McDowell

Muffy and Mike McLanahan

Will L. McLendon

Mr. Allen McReynolds

Ms. Maryellen McSweeney

Mr. and Mrs. D. Bradley McWilliams

Christianne Melanson and Durwin Sharp

Mr. and Mrs. Robert Menzie

Ms. Georgette M. Michko

Ms. Suzanne Mimnaugh

Kathleen Moore and Steven Homer

Sid Moorhead

Juan R. Morales

Mr. and Mrs. Sidney S. Moran

Mr. and Mrs. Marvin H. Mueller

Ms. Linda C. Murray

Terrylin G. Neale

Erik B. Nelson and Terry R. Brandhorst

Mrs. Bobbie Newman

Mrs. Tassie Nicandros

Mrs. James W. O'Keefe

Beverly and Staman Ogilvie

Geoffry H. Oshman

Ms. Maria C. (Macky) Osorio

Susan and Edward Osterberg

Mrs. Joan D. Osterweil

Mr. and Mrs. Richard A. Percoco

Sara M. Peterson

Mark and Nancy Picus

Mr. and Mrs. Harry C. Pinson

Susie and Jim Pokorski

Gloria M. Portela

Suzanne Page-Pryde and Arthur Pryde

Dr. Angela Rechichi-Apollo

Mr. Todd Reppert

Conrad and Charlaine Reynolds

Ms. Wanda A. Reynolds

Ed and Janet Rinehart

Edward N. Robinson

Mrs. Shirley Rose

Glen A. Rosenbaum

Mr. John C. Rudder Jr.

H. Clifford Rudisill and Ray E. Wilson

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Rushing

Dr. Mo & Mrs. Brigitte Saidi

Mr. and Mrs. Terrell F. Sanders

Ms. Wanda Schaffner

Mr. Chris Schilling

Kenneth and Deborah Scianna

Mr. and Mrs. Charles Senuta

Mrs. Helen P. Shaffer

Ms. Sue A. Shirley-Howard

Hinda Simon

Mr. Herbert Simons

Ms. Susan Simpson

Ms. Janet Sims

Bruce Smith

Mr. Robert J. Smouse

Ms. Linda F. Sonier

Dian and Harlan Stai

Ms. Darla Y. Stange

Dr. and Mrs. C. Richard Stasney

Catherine Stevenson

Bruce Suter

Rhonda Sweeney

Mrs. Carolyn Taub

Mr. Quentin Thigpen and Ms. Amy Psaris

Fiona Toth

Mr. John G. Turner and Mr. Jerry G. Fischer

Mr. and Mrs. Paul Turner

Mr. and Mrs. Jesse B. Tutor

Birgitt van Wijk

Mr. and Mrs. Alfredo Vilas

Marietta Voglis

Mrs. Rons Voogt

James and Mary Waggoner

Dean Walker

Mr. William V. Walker

Shirley Warshaw

Mr. Gordon D. Watson

Ms. Rebecca Weaver

Mr. Jesse Weir

Mr. Geoffrey Westergaard

Pippa Wiley

Ms. Jane L. Williams

Mr. and Mrs. David S. Wolff

Dr. Fabian Worthing

Lynn Wyatt

Alan and Frank York

Mr. and Mrs. Mark Yzaguirre

Mrs. Lorena Zavala

John L. Zipprich II

28 Anonymous

WE HONOR THE MEMORY OF THOSE WHO INCLUDED HGO IN THEIR ESTATE PLANS:

Elaine Jaffe Altschuler

Dr. Antonio Arana

Janice Barrow

Dr. Thomas D. Barrow

Ronald Borschow

Mr. Stephen R. Brenner

Mr. Ira B. Brown

Joan Bruchas and H. Philip Cowdin

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Capshaw

Dr. Lawrence E. Carlton

Mr. Tony Carroll, LCSW

Michael Cochran

Judy Cummings

Karl A. Dahm

Ms. Marilyn R. Davis

Dick Evans

Frank R. Eyler

Linda Finger

Christine E. George

Adelma Graham

Roberta and Jack Harris

Jackson C. Hicks

Dr. Marjorie Horning

Mark Lensky

Mary R. Lewis

Bette and Peter Liebgold

Mrs. Margaret Love

Ms. Marsha Malev

HOUSTON GRAND OPERA ENDOWMENT

Frances Marzio

Mr. Constantine Nicandros

M. Joan Nish

Mr. James W. O’Keefe

Barbara M. Osborne

Mrs. Mary Ann Phillips

Mr. Howard Pieper

Mr. and Mrs. Craig M. Rowley

Mrs. Joseph P. Ruddell

Mr. Eric W. Stein Sr.

John and Fanny Stone

Dr. Carlos Vallbona

Daisy Wong

The Houston Grand Opera Endowment, Inc., is a separate nonprofit organization that invests contributions to earn income for the benefit of Houston Grand Opera Association. The Endowment Board works with CAPTRUST, an independent investment counsel, to engage professional investment managers. An endowed fund can be permanently established within the Houston Grand Opera Endowment through a direct contribution or via a planned gift such as a bequest. The fund can be designated for general purposes or specific interests. For a discussion on endowing a fund, please contact Deborah Hirsch, senior director of philanthropy, at 713-546-0259 or DHirsch@HGO.org. HGO acknowledges with deep gratitude the following endowed funds.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Officers

Yolanda Knull, Chair

Tom Rushing, Senior Chair

Janet L. Carrig, Chair Emeritus

Marianne Kah, Vice Chair

Terrylin Neale, Secretary; Treasurer

Members at Large

Thomas R. Ajamie

Khori Dastoor

Richard Husseini

Stephen Kaufman

Claire Liu

Mark Poag

Scott Wise

GENERAL ENDOWMENT FUNDS

Susan Saurage-Altenloh and William

Altenloh Endowed Fund

The Rudy Avelar Patron Services Fund

Charles T. (Ted) Bauer Memorial Fund

Sandra Bernhard Endowed Fund

The Stanley and Shirley Beyer  Endowed Fund

Ronald C. Borschow Endowment Fund

Mary Frances Newton  Bowers Endowment Fund

Pat and Daniel A. Breen Endowment Fund

The Brown Foundation Endowment Fund

Joan Bruchas and H. Philip Cowdin  Endowed Fund

Sarah and Ernest Butler Endowment Fund

Jane and Robert Cizik Endowment

Michael and Mathilda Cochran

Endowment Fund

Douglas E. Colin Endowment Fund

The Gerald and Bobbie-Vee Cooney

Rudy Avelar Fund

Mary Jane Fedder Endowed Fund

Linda K. Finger Endowed Fund

Robert W. George Endowment Fund

Adelma Graham Endowed Fund

Frank Greenberg, M.D. Endowment Fund

Roberta and Jack Harris Endowed Fund

Jackson D. Hicks Endowment Fund

General and Mrs. Maurice Hirsch

Opera Fund

Ann Holmes Endowed Fund

Ira Brown Endowment Fund

Elizabeth Rieke and Wayne V. Jones

Fund

Leech Family Resilience Fund

Lensky Family Endowed Fund

Mary R. Lewis Endowed Fund

Beth Madison Endowed Fund

Frances Marzio Fund for Excellence

Franci Neely Endowed Fund

Constantine S. Nicandros  Endowment Fund

Barbara M. Osborne Charitable Trust

Cynthia and Anthony Petrello

Endowed Fund

Mary Ann Phillips Endowed Fund

C. Howard Pieper Endowment Fund

Kitty King Powell Endowment Fund

Rowley Family Endowment Fund

The Ruddell Endowment Fund

Sue Simpson Schwartz Endowment Fund

Yolanda Knull, Chair

Shell Lubricants (formerly Pennzoil —  Quaker State Company) Fund

Dian and Harlan Stai Fund

The John and Fanny Stone

Endowment Fund

Dorothy Barton Thomas Endowment Fund

John G. Turner and  Jerry G. Fischer Endowed Fund

John and Sheila Tweed Endowed Fund

Marietta Voglis Endowed Fund

Bonnie Sue Wooldridge Endowment Fund

The Wortham Foundation Permanent

Endowment Fund

PRODUCTION FUNDS

Edward and Frances Bing Fund

Tracey D. Conwell Endowment Fund

The Wagner Fund

PRINCIPAL ARTISTS FUNDS

Jesse Weir and Roberto Ayala Artist Fund

The Lynn Wyatt Great Artist Fund

ENDOWED CHAIRS AND FELLOWSHIPS

Margaret Alkek Williams Chair:

Khori Dastoor, General Director and Chief

Executive Officer

Sarah and Ernest Butler Chair:

Patrick Summers, Artistic and  Music Director

Sarah and Ernest Butler

Chorus Director Chair: Richard Bado

Sarah and Ernest Butler

Concertmaster Chair: Denise Tarrant

Mr. and Mrs. James A. Elkins Jr.

Endowed Chair: Peter Pasztor

Mr. and Mrs. Albert B. Alkek Chair:

Maureen Zoltek

James A. Elkins Jr. Endowed Visiting

Artist Fund

ELECTRONIC MEDIA FUNDS

The Ford Foundation Endowment Fund

Marjorie and Thomas Capshaw

Endowment Fund

Houston Grand Opera Guild

Endowment Fund

James J. Drach Endowment Fund

Evans and Portela Family Endowed Chair

Carol Lynn Lay Fletcher Endowment Fund

William Randolph Hearst Endowed

Scholarship Fund

Charlotte Howe Memorial

Scholarship Fund

Elva Lobit Opera Endowment Fund

Marian and Speros Martel Foundation

Endowment Fund

Laura and Brad McWilliams

Endowed Fund

Erin Gregory Neale Endowment Fund

Dr. Mary Joan Nish and Patricia Bratsas

Endowed Fund

John M. O’Quinn Foundation Endowed

Fellowship Fund

Shell Lubricants (formerly Pennzoil —  Quaker State Company) Fund

Mary C. Gayler Snook Endowment Fund

Dian and Harlan Stai Fund

Tenneco, Inc. Endowment Fund

Weston-Cargill Endowed Fund

EDUCATION FUNDS

Bauer Family Fund

Sandra Bernhard Education Fund

Lawrence E. Carlton, M.D.,  Endowment Fund

Beth Crispin Endowment Fund

James J. Drach Endowment Fund

Fondren Foundation Fund for  Educational Programs

David Clark Grant Endowment Fund

The Schissler Family Foundation

Endowed Fund for Educational Programs

OUTREACH FUNDS

Guyla Pircher Harris Project

SARAH AND ERNEST BUTLER HOUSTON GRAND OPERA STUDIO FUNDS

Audrey Jones Beck Endowed Fellowship

Fund/Houston Endowment, Inc.

The Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation

Endowment Fund

Spring Opera Festival Fund (Shell  Lubricants, formerly Pennzoil—Quaker  State Company)

CONCERT OF ARIAS

Eleanor Searle McCollum

Endowment Fund

PLAN YOUR VISIT

RESOURCES

HGO is here to make your outing to the opera a special one. When planning your visit, you have multiple resources:

Visit our website, HGO.org, to learn more about the opera you’re seeing, get directions to the theater, purchase tickets and merchandise, make a donation, and much more.

Contact HGO’s Customer Care Center at 713-228-6737 or CustomerCare@hgo.org to request assistance with performance information, purchase or exchange tickets, or make a donation. 10-5 M-F, 10-curtain performance days.

Purchase tickets and make exchanges in person at the HGO Box Office at the Wortham Theater Center, 550 Prairie. Open two hours prior to performances. Hours are subject to change.

ENJOY THE WORTHAM

We encourage our guests to make full use of the Wortham Theater Center when at an HGO performance. You can:

Attend a free Opera Insights lecture: Brush up on the day’s opera during one of HGO's popular talks featuring Dramaturg Jeremy Johnson and special guests. Join us on the Orchestra level of the Brown Auditorium 45 minutes before curtain time.

Relax and reflect: The Wortham Theater Center’s Brown and Cullen alcoves are there for all to enjoy. Step inside one of these golden-hued spaces in the Grand Foyer, and you’ll find a calm place to reflect on the day’s performance.

Rent a pair of binoculars: Want to see the action up close? You can rent binoculars on the Grand Tier level (5th floor).

Browse the merchandise: Posters from our current season, T-shirts, and more are available at the boutique in the Grand Foyer.

Dine in: Food services are available prior to each performance, with seating available throughout the Grand Foyer.

Enjoy a drink: The lobby bars are open before each performance and during intermission. Pro tip: Pre-order beverages for intermission at any of the bars when you arrive at the theater, and your drinks will be waiting for you!

The Founders Salon: The Founders Salon features a prix fixe, seasonally inspired menu. Reservations are required, with a priority reservation window open for Patrons Circle members up to 72 hours before the performance date. Reservations then open to full-season subscribers. To reserve, call 713-533-9318 or email Cafe@ElegantEventsByMichael.com.

TICKET ASSISTANCE

Exchanging tickets: Subscribers may exchange their tickets for a different performance of the same opera without fee, subject to availability. Non-subscription single tickets may be exchanged with a service fee of $10 per ticket. When exchanged for tickets of greater value, the customer will be responsible for the difference; no refunds will be made. No exchanges are permitted after the performance has begun. For assistance, contact the Customer Care Center at 713-546-6737 or CustomerCare@HGO.org.

Replacing lost or misplaced tickets: Contact the Customer Care Center to request replacement tickets, which will be reprinted and held at the Will Call window for you free of charge. or assistance, contact the Customer Care Center at 713-546-6737 or CustomerCare@ HGO.org.

Options for patrons with disabilities: The Wortham features wheelchair access to both theaters with a choice of seating locations and ticket prices. An FM assistive listening device, provided by the Houston First Corporation, is available for use free of charge at all performances. Contact the Customer Care Center for

details. Descriptive services for persons with vision loss are available with 48-hour advance reservations; call Customer Care at 713-5466737 for details.

PARKING

Nearby paid-parking garages: These include The Theater District Parking Garage, the Lyric Parking Garage, and the Alley Theatre Garage. All are credit card-only.

Parking for guests with disabilities: If you have a state-issued disability permit and need valet parking, you may purchase special passes by contacting the Customer Care Center. Subject to availability. Parking spots for disabled ticket holders are also available in the Theater District Garage on a first-come, first-served basis.

Patrons Circle parking: Members enjoy complimentary self-parking in the reserved Patron Circle section of the Theater District Parking Garage.

Trustee valet parking: Trustees may utilize the valet station located on Prairie Street. If you would like information about Patrons Circle or Trustee membership, please contact HGO’s Philanthropy staff at 713-546-0704 or DonorServices@HGO.org.

Leave your car at home: Alto is the official rideshare of HGO. Use the special designated drop-off/pick up area located 551 Prairie Street.

EXPLORE DOWNTOWN

HGO's recommendations for making the most of our vibrant neighborhood

Many of our audience members take the opportunity to explore downtown during a night or afternoon out at the opera. Here are some of our favorites for dining near the Wortham:

GJ Tavern, for an incredible burger and a cocktail.

Guard and Grace, for steaks, oysters, and charcuterie with a view.

B&B Butchers & Restaurant, for the finest Texas and Japanese Wagyu hand-cut steaks.

Bravery Food Hall, for a casual, chef-driven culinary experience.

Cultivated F+B in the Lancaster Hotel, for a refined night out at a historic Houston landmark.

Rosalie Italian Soul in the C. Baldwin, for red-sauce Italian in a gorgeous setting.

Common Bond Brasserie, for French comfort classics in an adorable dining room.

POST Houston Food Hall, for a foodie paradise inside an eye-popping downtown landmark (as featured on Top Chef !).

Lyric Market food hall, for a wide variety of tasty cuisines and a gorgeous bar in a fun, urban setting.

For guests coming in from out of town, or any operagoer wanting to make it a downtown staycation, we recommend:

The Lancaster, for old-world glamour and service to match.

Magnolia Hotel, for historic charm with modern style.

Hilton-Americas, for refined elegance plus all the amenities.

There’s lots of fun to be had downtown! Spots to explore include:

The Buffalo Bayou Walking Trail: Walk or take a tour of the bayou on a Segway and cover more ground.

Downtown Houston Tunnel System: a system of underground tunnels that includes myriad restaurants and food halls.

Bayou Place: a collection of entertainment and dining venues.

Minute Maid Park: home of the Houston Astros.

Discovery Green: a vibrant urban park.

Julia Ideson Library: historic library with distinctive and elegant Spanish architecture.

Avenida Houston: fun place to sip, stroll, and savor.

Toyota Center: home of the Houston Rockets.

Wells Fargo Tower Observation Deck: FREE!

EAT STAY DO

Sam Houston Park: eight historic homes in a park setting, open for tours.

Market Square Park: Houston’s oldest park.

SAVE THE DATES

APRIL 21, 23M, 29, MAY 2, 5

Performances of Puccini’s Tosca. Wortham Theater Center’s Brown Theater. Ticketholders are invited to Dramaturg Jeremy Johnson’s Opera Insights lectures, held in the Brown’s Orchestra section 45 minutes prior to each performance. Special intermission reception for members of Opening Nights for Young Professionals at the April 21 performance only.

APRIL 28, 30M, MAY 6, 10, 12

Performances of Strauss’s Salome Wortham Theater Center’s Brown Theater. Ticketholders are invited to Dramaturg Jeremy Johnson’s Opera Insights lectures, held in the Brown’s Orchestra section 45 minutes prior to each performance. Special intermission reception for members of Opening Nights for Young Professionals at the April 28 performance only, and for members of Overture at the May 6 performance only.

APRIL 26

Patrons Circle Recital: HGO presents a private recital for Patrons Circle members featuring tenor Jonathan Tetelman, accompanied by Kirill Kuzmin.

APRIL 28

Local artist Reginal Adams presents a labyrinth installation inspired by Strauss’s Salome on Fish Plaza, outside of the Wortham Center. 5 to 7 p.m. Free.

MAY 18

Music and Meditations: six new HGO-commissioned chamber works cap off six years of Seeking the Human Spirit. Menil Collection and Rothko Chapel; performances start at both sites at 6 p.m., followed by a 7:45 p.m. labyrinth walk at Menil Park. Free. For information and to register, visit HGO.org/ STHS.

MAY 19 AND 20

Performances of Verdi’s La traviata. Miller Outdoor Theatre. 8 p.m. Free.

JUNE AND JULY

Sing! Move! Play! summer camp at Harris County Public Libraries including Octavia Fields Library, Evelyn Meador Library, and Galena Park Public Library. Grades Pre-K-2. Free. To register, visit the library websites. For more information, visit HGO.org/ Community-and-Learning.

JUNE 27 TO JULY 7

Art of Opera summer camp. Kinder HSPVA. 9 a.m.-4 p.m. weekdays except July 4. Grades 9-graduated seniors. Final performance July 7 at HSPVA’s Denney Theater. $800. Visit HGO.org/SummerCamp or email HGOCamp@HGO.org.

For more performances and events, visit HGO.org!

JUNE 12 TO 16

Create an Opera summer camp. Wheeler Avenue Baptist Church. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. daily. Grades 3-8. Visit HGO.org/SummerCamp or email HGOCamp@HGO.org

Khori Dastoor

General Director and CEO

Margaret Alkek Williams Chair

Patrick Summers

Artistic and Music Director *

Sarah and Ernest Butler Chair

ADVISOR

Ana María Martínez, Artistic Advisor

EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP GROUP

Richard Bado, Director of Artistic Planning/  Chorus Director *, Sarah and Ernest  Butler Chorus Director Chair

Jennifer Bowman, Director of Community  and Learning

Jennifer Davenport, Chief Marketing and  Experience Officer

Molly Dill, Chief Operating Officer *

Elizabeth Greer, Chief Financial Officer

Gregory S. Robertson, Chief Philanthropy  Officer *

SENIOR MANAGEMENT TEAM

Kristen E. Burke, Director of Production*

Sharon Ellinger, Director of Human Resources

Deborah Hirsch, Senior Director of  Philanthropy *

Scott Ipsen, Director of Patron Experience *

David Krohn, Director of Philanthropy

Alisa Magallón, Associate Director of  Programming & Engagement,  Community and Learning *

Brian Speck, Director of Butler Studio *

Monica Thakkar, Associate Director of  Artistic Planning

OFFICE OF THE GENERAL DIRECTOR

Shelby Connolly, Governance Manager

Sadie Dill, Special Assistant to the Office of the General Director

Mary Elsey, Chief of Staff to the  General Director and CEO

Claire Padien-Havens, Director of  Strategic Projects & Initiatives

ARTISTIC

Chris Abide, Rehearsal Administrator

Lyanne Alvarado, Assistant Manager of  Rehearsal Planning & Artist Services

Alex Amsel, Resident Conductor

Richard S. Brown, Orchestra Personnel

*

Emilia Covault, Music Administrator

Joel Goodloe, Associate Director of Rehearsal

& Artist Services

Eun Sun Kim, Principal Guest Conductor

Kiera Krieg, Artist Services Coordinator

Kirill Kuzmin, Head of Music Staff

Mark C. Lear, Associate Artistic  Administrator *

Joshua Luty, Music Librarian

Lucas Nguyen, Music Library Apprentice

Peter Pasztor, Principal Coach *

Karen Reeves, Children’s Chorus Director *

Madeline Slettedahl, Assistant Conductor

AUDIENCES

Marc Alba, Customer Care Specialist

Ellen Bergener, Customer Care Representative

Gabrielle Castillo, Customer Care Specialist

Chelsea Crouse, Creative Manager

Juan Flores, Customer Care Specialist

Jessica Gonzalez, Marketing Manager

Latrinita Johnson, Customer Care Specialist

Maricruz Kwon, Digital Content Coordinator

Jazzlyn Levigne, Customer Care Representative

Stephan Little, Customer Care Specialist

Catherine Matusow, Associate Director of Communications

Matt McKee, Associate Director of Sales and  Service

Joel Nott, Customer Care Specialist

Christopher Robinson, Graphic Designer

Alan Sellar, Videographer

Amber Sheppard, Patron Services Manager

Armando Urdiales, Marketing Coordinator,  Audience Initiatives

Dorian Valenzuela, Digital Content Manager

THE GENEVIEVE P. DEMME ARCHIVES AND RESOURCE CENTER

Brian Mitchell, Archivist *

COMMUNITY AND LEARNING

Favour Aimufua, Programs Coordinator

George Heathco, Programs Coordinator

Jeremy Johnson, Dramaturg &  Associate Director of New Works

Karen Mata, Operations Manager

Rovion Reed, Production & Projects Manager

Joel Thompson, Composer-in-Residence

Lisa Vickers, Bauer Family High School Voice  Studio Manager

Dr. Kiana Day Williams, Associate Director

of School & Educator Engagement

FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION

Christian Davis, Human Resources Generalist

Ariel Ehrman, Business Intelligence Manager

Luis Franco, Office Services Coordinator *

Denise Fruge, Accounts Payable  Administrator *

Matt Gonzales, Database Administrator *

Vicky Hernandez, Business Intelligence  Coordinator

Chasity Hopkins, Accounting Manager

Ty Jones, Network Administrator

Elia Medina, Payroll Administrator

Denise Simon, Office Administrator *

Chaedron Wright, Information

Technology Assistant

OPERATIONS

Christopher Staub, Operations Manager *

PHILANTHROPY

Alex de Aguiar Reuter, Associate Director of Philanthropy

Sarah Bertrand, Philanthropy Officer

Kelly Finn, Director of Institutional Giving *

Tessa Larson, Philanthropy Officer

Sarah Long, Associate Director of  Philanthropy

Patrick Long-Quian, Philanthropy Operations  Coordinator

Catie Lovett, Donor Event Specialist

Meredith Morse, Operations Manager,  Institutional Giving

Amanda Neiter, Director of Legacy Giving

Allison Reeves, Associate Director of  Special Events

Brooke Rogers, Director of Special Events

Madeline Sebastian, Associate Director  of Philanthropy

P RODUCTION

Philip Alfano, Lighting Associate *

Brian August, Stage Manager

Kaleb Babb, Costume Coordinator

Michael James Clark, Head of Lighting &  Production Media *

Andrew Cloud, Properties Associate *

Rick Combs, Associate Technical Director

Norma Cortez, Costume Director *

Meg Edwards, Assistant Stage Manger

Caitlin Farley, Assistant Stage Manager

Joseph B. Farley, Interim Technical Director

Vince Ferraro, Head Electrician *

Beth Goodill, Assistant Stage Manager

Bridget Green, Wig and Makeup Assistant

Jackson Halphide, Assistant Technical Director

Eduardo Hawkins, Head of Sound *

David Heckman, Costume Coordinator

Assistant

John Howard, Head Carpenter

Jennelle John-Lewis, Assistant Stage Manager

Esmeralda De Leon, Costume Coordinator *

Nara Lesser, Costume Production Assistant

Judy Malone-Stein, Wardrobe Supervisor *

Melissa McClung, Technical and Production Administrator

Megan, Properties Design Director *

Colter Schoenfish, Assistant Director

Kaley Karis Smith, Assistant Director

Stephanie Smith, Assistant Director

Meghan Spear, Assistant Stage Manager

Dotti Staker, Wig and Makeup

Department Head *

Bryan Stinnet, Assistant Carpenter/  Head Flyperson

Myrna Vallejo, Costume Shop Supervisor *

Sean Waldron, Head of Props

Annie Wheeler, Stage Manager *

SARAH AND ERNEST BUTLER HOUSTON GRAND OPERA STUDIO

Jamie Gelfand, Butler Studio Manager

Maureen Zoltek, Butler Studio Music Director

Mr. & Mrs. Albert B. Alkek Chair

*denotes 10 or more years of service

SUBSCRIBER BENEFITS

SUBSCRIBE TO HGO’S NEW SEASON, AND WITH OPERA AS YOUR GUIDE, LET THE...

SAVINGS

• A 25% DISCOUNT ON ADDITIONAL SINGLEPRODUCTION TICKETS (UP TO 10 PER MAINSTAGE PRODUCTION, PENDING AVAILABILITY)

• A 10% OFF DISCOUNT CODE FOR THE HGO ONLINE BOUTIQUE

ACCESS

• THE ABILITY TO PURCHASE TICKETS FOR ALL PERFORMANCES BEFORE THEY ARE MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC

PERKS

• A MONTHLY SUBSCRIBER NEWSLETTER THAT INCLUDES THE MOST UP-TO-DATE INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR

BENEFITS, GIVEAWAYS, AND UPDATES ON HGO HAPPENINGS

• DEALS AT NEARBY RESTAURANTS INCLUDING LYRIC MARKET, GUARD AND GRACE, AND GJ TAVERN

• TWO FREE TICKETS TO HGO’S ANNUAL HGO BUTLER STUDIO SHOWCASE PERFORMANCE

NOW PRESENTING 2023/24

HEGGIE, SCHEER & ZOLLAR

• AUTOMATIC ENTRY TO WIN AMAZING PRIZES EACH MONTH, INCLUDING ONE-OFA-KIND MEMORABILIA AND VIP EXPERIENCES

FLEXIBILITY

• THE ABILITY TO EXCHANGE TICKETS FOR A TAX RECEIPT, OR FOR ANOTHER PERFORMANCE DATE, WITH NO EXCHANGE FEES

• THE OPTION TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF AN INTEREST-FREE PAYMENT PLAN

• AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN HGO’S AUTORENEWAL PROGRAM—AND RECEIVE TWO CONCERT TICKETS TO THE CONCERT OF ARIAS!