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TABLE OF CONTENTS 02

Board of Directors

02

Board of Trustees

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Program

11

Thank You to Our Donors

17

Detroit Opera Orchestra

18 Administration and Staff 20

General Information

Shauna Ryder Diggs Enrico DiGirolamo Maria C. Duey Fern R. Espino

JULY 1, 2024— JUNE 30, 2025

Paul E. Ewing

Lourdes V. Andaya

Marianne Endicott

BOARD OF DIRECTORS JULY 1, 2024— JUNE 30, 2025 CHAIR

Ethan D. Davidson VICE CHAIR

Mary Kramer VICE CHAIR

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Mary Ann Fontana

Naomi André

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Harold Mitchell Arrington

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Dexter Mason

Richard Brodie

Ali Moiin

Charles D. Bullock

Allan Nachman

Thomas Cohn

Ann Nicholson

Peter & Shelly Cooper

Sara Pozzi

Ethan & Gretchen Davidson

Carrie Pryor Paul Ragheb

Kevin Dennis & Jeremy Zeltzer

Irvin D. Reid

Cristina DiChiera

Evan D. Ross

Lisa M. DiChiera

Nedda Shayota

Shauna Ryder Diggs

Terry Shea

Enrico & Kathleen DiGirolamo

Matthew Simoncini Richard Sonenklar Lorna Thomas Jesse Venegas

Debbie Dingell Mary Jane Doerr Maria C. Duey Kenneth & Frances Eisenberg

Don Manvel

Barbara Walkowski

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Marianne Endicott

Ellen Hill Zeringue

Alex Erdeljan

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Bharat C. Gandhi IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIR

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Elizabeth Brooks

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Shelly Cooper

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Herman Frankel

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Naomi André

Jennifer Nasser

Richard A. Brodie

Charlotte Podowski

Kevin Dennis

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Patty Isacson Sabee & David Sabee

Lisa M. DiChiera

Richard Webb

Jill Johnson

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Barbara Walkowski

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Gary L. Wasserman

Denise J. Lewis

R. Jamison & Karen Williams

Arthur & Nancy Liebler

Ellen Hill Zeringue

Stephan & Marian Loginsky Mary Alice Lomason Don Manvel

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Agustin Arbulu

Dexter Mason

Dede Feldman

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FOUNDING MEMBERS Lynn* & Ruth* Townsend Avern* & Joyce* Cohn John & Mardell* De Carlo David* & Karen V.* DiChiera Aaron* & Bernice* Gershenson Donald* & Josephine* Graves Roman* & Katherine* Gribbs John* & Gwendolyn* Griffin Harry* & Jennie* Jones Wade* & Dores* McCree Harry J. Nederlander* E. Harwood Rydholm* Neil & Phyllis* F. Snow Richard* & Beatrice* Strichartz

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A Legacy of Generosity (1941-2024) Anyone who had the good fortune to know Mona Alonzo—a longtime Detroit Opera donor and patron who passed away in February 2024— will remember her as an exceedingly warm and sincere person who was deeply committed to her family and friends, and generously supportive of the numerous organizations that were dear to her heart.

Possessing a profound passion for culture, and especially the arts, Mona attended theater festivals every summer and regularly visited and contributed to cultural institutions like Detroit Opera. Mona and her husband Richard were loyal DO subscribers for 25 years and donors for more than 30. And now, with her passing, Mona has left us a generous legacy gift as well. In accordance with her wishes, and her enthusiasm for Yuval Sharon’s ambitious artistic vision for DO, this gift will be used to support our general operations, giving us the freedom to direct the funds wherever they are most needed.

We are eternally grateful to Mona—for her stalwart support through every phase of our evolution as a driver of culture in Detroit, for her fervent belief in our transformative vision and auspicious future, and for her tremendous generosity, which will significantly benefit our organization, our audiences, and our community for many years to come.

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A message from

Yuval Sharon As I listen to the electrifying music of Anthony Davis and contemplate the stories of Korey Wise, Yusef Salaam, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, and Antron McCray, I find myself asking the following questions: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to live in a world in which this story was purely of the past? Wouldn’t we rather live in a society in which the horrific experience of these five innocent teens was an outlier, rather than an all-too-common occurrence? Why has our culture swung so far and so quickly against all initiatives that attempt to rectify centuries of racial prejudice? How can the arts offer us a vessel for considering these questions as a society?

The Central Park Five is an empowering American story of exoneration and justice ultimately prevailing over prejudice. I believe it will speak powerfully to everybody in Detroit, regardless of race or political leaning. But it does not come easy. It is a harrowing story, made all the more painful by how present tense this work feels. This past fall, the five men known now as “The Exonerated Five” sued Donald Trump for ongoing defamation of character, in some way attempting to rectify decades of injurious speech. It’s a reminder that the effects of this story are by no means simply of the past. Perpetuating the telling of these stories until we live in that more just society is part of our responsibility as an organization dedicated to the advancement of this city’s culture.

I chose Davis’s opera after the huge success of his first opera here, X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. I wanted to ensure that the connection Detroiters made with his music could go beyond that one work, and that our company’s relationship to his important musical voice is an ongoing one. This is his most recent opera and the recipient of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Music, making it a natural next piece to present. Like X, The Central Park Five is energetic and rhythmically complex, with musical characterizations that show the effects of Davis’s lifelong experience in opera. And we are all excited to hear how the expanded orchestrations that Detroit Opera commissioned for our orchestra will enlarge this story to its greatest dimensions.

In listening to this cast bring the work to life in rehearsal, I found myself thinking through my own responses (rather than answers) to the question of what the arts can offer us in moments like these. Sitting in the auditorium with you, I look forward to discovering the resonance of those responses together.

Yuval Sharon Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director, Detroit Opera D E T R OI T O P ER A P 1

Farewell, Suzanne!

From the Brindisi in Verdi’s La traviata to the Toreador Song in Carmen, any time you hear a chorus at Detroit Opera, it’s thanks to the work of Suzanne Mallare Acton, our assistant music director and chorus master. For more than 40 years, she has been the one who makes the chorus shine onstage, bringing impeccable musicianship to every role she has held at the company. Suzanne is a beloved member of the Detroit Opera family; her roles have included conductor, accompanist, coach, score and libretto expert, and much more.

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In 1981, Suzanne began at Detroit Opera (Michigan Opera Theatre) as music director for community programs; she also served as coach and accompanist for mainstage productions. In her first year with the company, she was appointed chorus master. Her podium debut was West Side Story in 1985, and over the years she has conducted more than 35 productions for the company. In 2007, Suzanne founded what is now known as the Detroit Opera Youth Chorus. Apart from her many roles at Detroit Opera, Suzanne has led an extensive guest conducting career, including Detroit Chamber Winds and Strings, Birmingham Bloomfield Symphony, and the Saginaw Bay Symphony.

From 1996 to 2021, Suzanne was artistic and music director of Detroit’s Rackham Choir. She has worked for Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, San Diego Opera, Opera Pacific, and Dayton Opera.

In June, Suzanne will be stepping down as Detroit Opera’s Assistant Music Director and Chorus Master. We will miss her greatly, and we wish her all the best as she embarks on a new life chapter.

In April, members of the Detroit Opera Chorus for Mozart’s Così fan tutte staged a “Last Supper” photo, with Chorus Master Suzanne Mallare Acton at center.

Photo by John Etsell

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 3

voicing

TRUTH

What happens when the stories we believe are challenged by the facts of reality? Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Anthony Davis has repeatedly confronted this question with operas that challenge audiences through their frank engagement with issues of race, gender, and power in America. He is drawn to what he calls “cultural moments”—fissures in history that expose the subterranean forces and tectonic collisions that transform our shared cultural landscape.

The Central Park Five revisits one such cultural moment.

By Ryan Ebright, Ph.D. On the night of April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old white investment banker named Trisha Meili was violently assaulted and raped while jogging in New York City’s Central Park. That same evening, a large group of teenagers from East Harlem entered the park, some of whom proceeded to assault and rob passersby.

Within a matter of hours, five teenaged Black and Latino boys—Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise—had been detained, arrested, interrogated, and coerced into confessing to Meili’s rape, despite a lack of evidence. The basic facts of the story are clear enough.

But facts, as we know, are susceptible to fictions. The stories we hear and those we tell shape our beliefs, framing our experience of the world as we move through it. In an essay published after the ensuing trials and wrongful convictions of the Central Park Five teens, writer Joan Didion indicted the prosecutors, media, and everyday New Yorkers for making the events conform to a narrative they already believed, one conditioned by anxieties about the city’s fiscal and physical decay in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash, the ongoing crack epidemic, and a growing moral panic over juvenile crime. More interested in resolving this story of American carnage than in finding the truth, New Yorkers had conflated victim and city. Such was the familiar pattern, she wrote: “A preference for broad strokes, for the distortion and flattening of character, and for the reduction of events to narrative.”

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X: T H E LIFE A N D T I M E S O F M ALC O L M X AT D E T R O I T O P E R A, 2 0 2 2. P H O T O B Y A U S T I N R I C H E Y

One of the strengths of opera is its capacity to do just the opposite. And in placing cultural moments on the opera stage, “you can subvert what is the master narrative of the story,” Davis says. This is an approach he first adopted with his groundbreaking opera X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, which premiered at the New York City Opera in 1986 and was revived to great acclaim at Detroit Opera three years ago. With X, Davis and his collaborators challenged the then predominant view of the Civil Rights leader as a violent incendiary by framing him as a Wagnerian tragic hero whose self-reinventions in the face of American racism—from Malcolm Little to Malcolm X to el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz— ultimately pointed toward redemption and transcendence.

Davis has chosen similarly portentous moments for his other operas. His 1997

opera Amistad, for instance, dramatized the 1839 uprising aboard the slave ship Amistad; the subsequent legal battle marked a significant waypoint on the U.S. path toward abolition. A decade later, Wakonda’s Dream explored the legacy of the 1879 trial of the Ponca chief Standing Bear, which established legal recognition for Native Americans as persons, with the right to sue for their freedom. Davis’s work is not limited to historical events that grapple with race: Tania reconsiders the Patty Hearst kidnapping, Lilith grapples with the mythology of Adam’s first wife (prior to Eve), and Lear on the Second Floor puts a modern spin on King Lear. They do, however, take part in a broader trend of recent operas that, as musicologist Jane Forner observes, reimagine universal or timeless narratives of humanity through the lens and politics of the present.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 5

Part of what sets these operas apart is their compositional language. Davis’s musical heritage is quintessentially pluralistic and, therefore, American, encompassing Afrodiasporicimprovisatory, European-classical, and experimental traditions. To that, he adds a breadth of stylistic fluency and inventiveness that pushes the genre in new directions. Both The Central Park Five and X, for instance, require improvising musicians within the orchestra. The latter opera, with its references to the blues, big band swing, bebop, and hard bop, traces the historical development of jazz in parallel with Malcolm’s life—a revolutionary idiom to complement a revolutionary figure.

This is another signature element of Davis’s operas: the way music reveals the unexpected nuances of a cultural moment. The 1988 Tone Loc song “Wild Thing,” which prosecutors in the case infamously misinterpreted as “wilding” when the teenagers referenced it, helped Davis find a musical point of entry into the story of the Central Park Five. “It began to represent the reflection of the anxiety that white America had about the influence of hip-hop,” Davis tells me, “and hip-hop culture in mainstream American culture.”

By 1989, hip-hop and rap were breaching the mainstream, and it was hard to miss.

“Rap is here to stay,” proclaimed Jesse Jackson (via sampling) on Quincy Jones’s jazz-rap fusion album Back on the Block.

Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” placed hip-hop at the crux of racial tensions in Spike Lee’s landmark film Do the Right Thing. Similar to how “Fight the Power” alludes to, but never directly samples, Malcolm X’s rhetoric of Black activism, Davis’s score for The Central Park Five P6

evokes, but never quotes, a panoply of Black musical styles and pieces using what he calls musical parody.

The most recognizable of these musical parodies arrives early in the opera, when the five boys romp through Central Park singing “We are the freaks!” above an irresistible groove based on ParliamentFunkadelic’s often-sampled 1975 anthem “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker).” Later, as they wait nervously in the police station, their singing recalls the tight vocal harmonies of Boyz II Men. The most important parody, however, is unquestionably Davis’s reference to Duke Ellington’s impressionistic tone poem Harlem, which opens with a distinctive trumpet solo that intones the neighborhood’s two-syllable name with its falling two-note melody. This musical reference first appears high in the violins in the opera’s opening moments, and its prevalence throughout the score in different guises, such as the singsong “This is my world” melody, affirms Harlem’s centrality in this story.

As in Davis’s other operas, the music of The Central Park Five is characterized by near constant motion and an expansive harmonic palette. Uneven and shifting meters propel the drama forward; melodic and rhythmic leitmotifs suffuse the orchestral writing. Like the “Harlem” motive, the lyrical melody of “This world is ours, this is our home” recurs orchestrally throughout the opera, grounding audiences in the work’s emotional core. Elsewhere, stylistic tropes convey different emotional atmospheres. In the extended interrogation scene, for instance, the music seems to play good cop/bad cop as it oscillates between a seductive bolero-tango (think of the

Habañera aria from Bizet’s Carmen) and an insistent, expanding cluster of dissonance. Later, a hypnotic marimbaviola duet inspired by Indonesian gamelan music conveys what Davis calls an “otherworldly feeling” that externalizes the boys’ shock at being sentenced to prison.

This moment of otherworldliness is one of several when the opera approaches surrealism. The opera’s transposition to this state beyond reality is especially audible in the shimmering harmonics, clanking prison bars, and other electronically manipulated sounds that punctuate and enrich the orchestral texture. The composite character of The Masque, in particular, which Davis describes the embodiment of “all aspects of racial oppression,” makes it clear that The Central Park Five tempers historical fact with metaphor and symbol.

Davis and librettist Richard Wesley found this balance between reality and metaphor over the course of the opera’s development. The earliest version, Five, which Trilogy Opera premiered in 2016, was shorter and significantly more abstract. In revising the opera for its 2019 premiere at Long Beach Opera as The Central Park Five, the creative team shifted toward realism by splitting off the characters of Donald Trump and the assistant district attorney from The Masque and adding arias for Sharonne Salaam and Korey Wise that better defined them as individuals. This production brings yet another change, as Detroit Opera premieres a full orchestration that expands on the earlier version’s chamber instrumentation for 16 players.

The success of The Central Park Five in Long Beach and Portland, along with its 2020 Pulitzer Prize, suggests that its exploration of injustice and resilience resonates with audiences today. The power of these themes comes, in part, from the opera’s threading of the needle between realism and storytelling. When Wesley was crafting the opera’s libretto, he tried to avoid the temptation to follow the famous adage from an old Western: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” “I have a responsibility,” Wesley says, “to remain faithful to the events as much as possible.” Even so, both he and Davis insist that opera is never real, never reality, despite any factual basis.

There is, of course, a degree of artifice to all art and to every story. The sung nature of opera is only the most obvious example of its distance from reality. But as The Central Park Five demonstrates, while opera may not be real, it can be true.

Dr. Ryan Ebright is an associate professor of musicology at Bowling Green State University. His research centers on American opera and contemporary music, and his work appears in the New York Times, New Yorker, Opera News, and various scholarly publications.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 7

On March 17, Detroit Opera presented “From Injustice to Advocacy: An Evening with Yusef Salaam” at Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.

Dr. Salaam (above) shared his story as one of the five teens at the center of Anthony Davis’s opera The Central Park Five, and his current work as New York City councilman. The event was a collaboration between Detroit Opera, the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, and the University of Michigan School of Social Work.

Above right: On March 17, Dr. Salaam takes a question from audience member Aya Waller-Bey, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Michigan.

The event was made possible by support from The Gilbert Family Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, The University of Michigan Arts Initiative, and The University of Michigan School of Social Work.

Photos by Brittany Greeson

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M AY 14 / W E D / 7:0 0 P M

Mike Karloff and Dr. Andrew Bishop: A Tribute to Composer Anthony Davis Spot Lite | 2905 Beaufait St, Detroit Mike Karloff is a multi-talented pianist, composer, arranger, conductor, and music director based in Windsor. Andrew Bishop is a versatile saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist, composer, improviser, educator, and scholar comfortable in many musical idioms. Together, they will perform a jazz program in tribute to composer Anthony Davis of The Central Park Five and X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X. FREE and open to the public. No reservation required.

M AY 1 5 / T H U / 6:0 0 –9:0 0 P M

America, I AM: From Injustice to Redemption The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History | 315 E. Warren Ave America, I AM: From Injustice to Redemption is a dynamic event of spoken work, art, and reflection that brings together Detroit-based exonerees who will share their personal narratives of resilience and transformation. Their stories, marked by trials and triumphs, offer a raw and real look at the intersections of justice, identity, and redemption. This community gathering will reflect on relevant topics around the Exonerated Five and provide an opportunity for the community to share their voices and engage in meaningful conversations. It will be a night that explores the themes of liberation, freedom, and advocacy through the powerful lenses of storytelling, poetry, and music.

FREE and open to the public. Register at thewright.org

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 9

synopsis The story of The Central Park Five AC T I

Following news of their exoneration, the Central Park Five appear. They are Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise. Now in their late 20s and early 30s, they sing of the loss of their youthful innocence, and look back to see why their dreams were deferred.

In Harlem, The Masque appears as a reporter and describes a feeling of foreboding as the city experiences high violent crime rates.

On a hot summer night, the Five now appear as bored teenagers looking for release. They find themselves swept into a swarm of Harlem youth streaming into Central Park. There are sounds of a jogger’s steps, and then screams.

The scene becomes more chaotic. The Masque, now a police officer, receives calls about incidents in the park and orders patrol cars to investigate. Hearing police sirens, the Five flee.

Finding themselves in a holding cell, Kevin and Ray wonder why they are there.

The Masque, now a police detective, begins to question them. At first, he is relatively benign, but then news arrives that a woman has been found brutally beaten in a remote area of Central Park near Harlem, and she may not live.

The police bring in Korey, Yusef, and Antron. The Masque’s attitude darkens, and as the interrogation becomes more aggressive, the Five, who deny any involvement in the crime, realize the seriousness of their situation. The Masque briefs the Assistant District Attorney on the case, and the ADA interrogates the Five.

Donald Trump enters and addresses a group of white supporters who are outraged by the incident in the park. The ADA promises to get to the truth and make the boys confess. The Masque shares her fury and resolve.

The parents of the Five appear and worry about their sons’ fate, while the boys lament the now dangerous and threatening state of their world.

The Masque and Trump appear with the ADA. She prepares for trial, feeling pressured by the two men and the public to obtain confessions. After reassuring The Masque that the Five are guilty and will confess, the ADA confronts each of them, telling them to implicate each other. She then appeals to their families, to convince them to encourage the boys to turn on one another.

This tactic works, and the Five finally agree to talk. They tell stories about what happened the night of the assault, each implicating the others. Everyone signs a statement except Yusef. The ADA has their confessions, and The Masque and Trump have their satisfaction.

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S Y N O P SI S

IN T ER M I SSIO N

AC T II

The charges against the Five fill the headlines. Trump meets with the ADA as his supporters express their outrage, and his ads in New York newspapers demand the death penalty. Yusef’s mother asserts that her son is being framed.

In the courtroom, the ADA presents her opening statement to the jury, claiming that the trial is about justice, not race.

In a hospital room, a woman awakens and sits up in her bed.

The Masque tells the boys that the victim, Trisha Meili, is awake, and the Five are ecstatic. They are sure that she will take one look at them and know they were not her attackers. But The Masque is just as convinced that she will implicate them. The ADA questions the victim in court, but she does not remember her attackers. The forensic officer brings the news that none of the DNA matches the boys, but The Masque dismisses the evidence because the boys have confessed. The ADA pressures the Five to plead guilty—but they refuse. The ADA presents her closing argument to the jury, citing the Five’s confessions as proof of their guilt. The Masque appears now as the judge, and the jury finds each of the boys guilty as their parents respond with anguished cries. The Five are blinded by the flashing lights of photographers as they contemplate their fate.

Years later, people demonstrate against the actions of the police. Trump responds.

After serving seven years in juvenile detention, Kevin, Raymond, Yusef, and Antron are released. They wonder what the future holds for them.

Thirteen years later, Korey—who, as the oldest of the Five, was tried as an adult—is approached in prison by an inmate, Matias Reyes, who admits to committing the assault and rape. After Reyes confesses, Korey, realizing that he will soon be free, is eager to finally show the world that he was telling the truth. Upon his release, Korey wonders how his life can be restored.

The Five have been exonerated. The Masque claims the new facts don’t matter, and Trump is unapologetic. The ADA still believes the men are guilty. Protesters who support the Five ask, “What is the cost of justice?”

The adult Five reappear and together sing of their struggles, their strength, and returning home.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 11

P12

ORIGINAL COSTUME SKE TCHES COUR TESY OF WA NDA WALDEN

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 1 3

T H E SE PERFO R M A N C E S OF THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE

A R E GEN ER OUSLY PR E S EN T ED BY 24/25 S E A S O N SP O N S O R

Nataki Garrett was partially supported by OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors, generously funded by the Marineau Family Foundation, with additional support by the Co-Ette Club, Inc.

Anthony Parnther is generously sponsored by Patty Isacson Sabee & David Sabee Freddie Ballentine is generously sponsored by Ebbie & Ayana Parsons Chaz'men Williams Ali is generously sponsored by Denise J. Lewis Nathan Granner is generously sponsored by Lorna Thomas, MD Markel Reed is partially sponsored by Nonprofit Enterprise at Work (NEW) and 100 Black Men of Greater Detroit, with additional support from Ankur Rungta and Downtown Boxing Gym. Babatunde Akinboboye is generously sponsored by Ali Moiin & William Kupsky

W I T H S UP P O R T FR O M

P 14

M USIC: Anthony Davis

L I B R E T T O: Richard Wesley W O RL D P R E M I E R E: June 15, 2019 at Long Beach Opera

F ULL O RC H E ST R AT IO N P R E M I E R E: May 10, 2025 at Detroit Opera

Sung in English with English subtitles D U R AT IO N: 2 H R S 3 0 M IN, O N E IN T ER M I S SIO N

After each performance, patrons are invited to stay in their seats for quiet contemplation and reflection.

SAT M AY 10, 7:30PM PR E-PER FOR M A NCE TALK @6:30P M W ITH A NTHON Y DAV IS A ND N ATA K I GA R R E T T FRI M AY 16, 7:30PM PR E-PER FOR M A NCE TALK @6:30P M W ITH DR. N AO MI A NDR É A ND A NTHON Y PA R NTHER SUN M AY 18, 2:30PM PR E-PER FOR M A NCE TALK @1:30P M W ITH DR. N AO MI A NDR É A ND A NTHON Y PA R NTHER

Quiet rooms will be available if any patron needs to leave the theater during the production. Please see an usher who will direct you.

Virtual Aftercare events will be offered to all attendees on May 12 & 19 at 7:00PM. Scan the QR code below to register.

No photography or video is allowed during the performance. Please silence all phones.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 1 5

PROGR AM

The Central Park Five

production DIR EC T O R

Nataki Garrett S E T D E SIG N ER

A SSI S TA N T DIR EC T O R

Mariana Sanchez Hernandez

Alexander Gedeon

C OS T U M E D E SIG N ER

A SSI S TA N T C O N DU C T O R

Wanda Walden

William Long

P R O JEC T IO N D E SIG N ER

R EP E T I T EU R S

Rasean Davonté Johnson LIG H T IN G D E SIG N ER

John Etsell Mike Karloff

Jason Lynch

S TAG E M A N AG ER

S O U N D D E SIG N ER

Peter Nictakis

Jody Elff

A SSI S TA N T S TAG E M A N AG ER S

Joanne Middleton-Weaver

Laurel McIntyre Hailli Ridsdale

A SS O CI AT E LIG H T IN G D E SIG N ER

P R O JEC T IO N P R O G R A M M ER

W IG & M A K EU P D E SIG N ER

Andrew Canaan

Parker Molacek

SOUND ARTIST

Earl Howard

Scenery designed by Mariana Sanchez Hernandez for Portland Opera Costumes designed by Wanda Walden for Portland Opera P16

CONDUCTOR. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Anthony Parnther ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY. . . . . . . . . . . . Catherine Martin KEVIN RICHARDSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Freddie Ballentine RAYMOND SANTANA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chaz’men Williams-Ali KOREY WISE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nathan Granner YUSEF SALAAM. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Markel Reed ANTRON MCCRAY. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Justin Hopkins THE MASQUE/JUDGE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Daniel Belcher DONALD TRUMP/FORENSICS OFFICER. . . . . . . . . . Todd Strange ANTRON’S MOTHER/KEVIN'S MOTHER/ENSEMBLE . . . . . . . . . . . .

Brianna J. Robinson SHARONNE SALAAM/ENSEMBLE ............Kendra Faith Beasley ANTRON’S FATHER/ENSEMBLE ...................... Elliott Paige RAYMOND’S FATHER/MATIAS REYES/ENSEMBLE . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Babatunde Akinboboye Detroit Opera debut Resident Artist

Detroit Opera gratefully acknowledges Henry Ford Health’s team of professionals, who provide care for the artists on our stage.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 17

C A S T / P R O D U C T IO N

cast

P18

B A B AT U N D E A K I N B O B O Y E S I N G S T H E R OL E O F M AT I A S R E Y E S I N TH E C ENTR AL PA R K FI V E. P H O T O B Y C H R I S T I N E D O N G / P O R T L A N D O P E R A

Detroit Federation of Musicians, Local #5, of the American Federation of Musicians

V IOLIN I

C ELLO

BA SS OO N

Daniel Stachyra*

Ivana Biliskov*

Gregory Quick*

Yuri Popowycz*

Benjamin Maxwell Andrea Yun* Robert Paddock Wesley Hornpetrie Nancy Chaklos

Liam Jackson

Interim Concertmaster Acting Assistant Concertmaster

Velda Kelly* David Ormai Molly Hughes* Courtney Lubin Henrik Karapetyan* Ying-Li Pan Jennifer Berg Ashley Dyer V IOLIN II

Emelyn Bashour* Principal

Beth Kirton* Andrew Wu* Sonja Bosca-Harasim Jenny Wan* Judith Teasdle Lorrie Gunn Joseph Deller V IOL A

John Madison* Principal

Scott Stefanko* Chloé Thominet Jacqueline Hanson* James Greer Julianne Zinn

Principal

BA SS

Jean Posekany Acting Principal

Robert Stiles Gary Gatzke Jon Luebke HARP

Beth Henson

Acting Principal

FLU T E

Dennis Carter II Acting Principal

Andrea Velasquez Alto & Piccolo

CL A R IN E T

Roi Karni* Principal

J. William King* Bass Clarinet

OBOE

Eli Stefanacci* Principal

* Detroit Opera Core Orchestra Members.

Members of the violin sections occasionally rotate.

Acting Principal

HORN

Colin Bianchi* Principal

Carrie Banfield-Taplin* T RU M PE T

David Ammer* Principal

BA SS T RO M BO N E

Bryan Pokorney T I M PA NI

Eric Stoss* Principal

PER C USSIO N

John Dorsey* I M PROV I SERS

James Hughes Alto Saxophone

Andrew Bishop Baritone Saxophone

Walter White Trumpet

Vincent Chandler Trombone

Michael Karloff Piano

Jeff Pedraz

Electric & Upright Bass

David Taylor Drum Set

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 1 9

ORCHESTR A

THE CENTRAL PARK FIVE ORCHESTRA

Anthony Davis | C O M P OSER One of the “great living American composers” (The New York Times), Anthony Davis is distinguished for his important contributions to opera, and for his symphonic, choral, and chamber works. He is the first to write in a new American genre: opera on a contemporary political subject. Anthony received the Pulitzer Prize for Music for The Central Park Five, which premiered at Long Beach Opera in 2019. The libretto by Richard Wesley is based on the true story of Kevin Richardson, Antron McCray, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana Jr., and Korey Wise, five teens wrongfully convicted of the rape of a white female jogger in Central Park. A recording of the Long Beach Opera performances will be released this season.

Anthony’s X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, featuring a libretto by Thulani Davis and a story by Christopher Davis, has taken on an almost mythic stature since its 1986 New York City Opera sold-out world premiere.

A new production—directed by Robert O’Hara and co-produced by five opera companies—originated at Detroit Opera in 2022 and opened at the Metropolitan Opera in 2024. The 1992 and 2022 X albums were nominated for Grammy Awards. Amistad, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, recalls the Amistad mutiny on an enslaver ship. Tania, with a libretto by Michael John LaChiusa, remembers Patricia Hearst’s abduction. Wakonda’s Dream, with a libretto by Yusef Komunyakaa, follows a contemporary Ponca family.

Anthony’s new opera, Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote, exploring challenges faced by families crossing the border, premieres in 2026 in San Diego and Tijuana.

In The Reef, featuring a libretto by Joan Ross, Anthony relocates two former lovers chronicled in Edith Wharton’s novel to a sugar plantation in Martinique.

Anthony’s orchestral works have been performed by the Atlanta Symphony, Boston Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, and San Francisco Symphony.

He made his Broadway debut composing for Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

His choral music includes Voyage Through Death to Life Upon these Shores, about the slave trade, and Restless Mourning, evoking the September 11 tragedy.

A virtuoso pianist, Anthony has been on the cutting edge of improvised music and jazz for four decades. A graduate of Yale, he holds the Cecil Lytle Chancellor Chair in African and African American Music at UC San Diego. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and has been inducted into OPERA America’s Hall of Fame. Website: anthonydavismusic.com

P20

Richard Wesley was born in Newark, New Jersey and graduated from Howard University. He studied playwriting with Owen Dodson and Ted Shine. A member of the New Lafayette Theater from 1970 through 1973, he served as managing editor of its Black Theater magazine. He was awarded a Drama Desk Award for his 1971 stage play The Black Terror. His 1978 play The Mighty Gents appeared on Broadway, after premiering off-Broadway at the Manhattan Theater Club under its original title, The Last Street Play. His 1989 play, The Talented Tenth, also at the Manhattan Theater Club, earned him an AUDELCO Award for Outstanding Play. In 2013, Wesley wrote the libretto for an opera, Papa Doc, for the Trilogy Opera Company, with music by Dorothy Rudd Moore, and adapted from an essay by Edwidge Danticat. Other librettos for Trilogy Opera include Five, with music by Anthony Davis; Kenyatta, with music by Trent Johnson; W.E.B. and Booker T, with music by Julius Williams; and Scott, Garner, Gray, Says: Jimmy Baldwin, with music by Dwayne Fulton. In 2019, The Central Park Five (a new version of Five) premiered at California’s Long Beach Opera. Wesley’s play Autumn received its New York premiere at the Billie Holiday Theater in 2016, and subsequently won six AUDELCO Awards, including Dramatic Production of the Year. Wesley has shared two NAACP Image “Best Picture” Awards for the motion pictures Uptown Saturday Night and Let’s Do It Again, both of which starred Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby. It’s Always Loud in the Balcony: From Harlem to Hollywood and Back, Wesley’s personal history of the Black theater movement over the last 50 years, was published in 2019. In 2020, Anthony Davis’s opera The Central Park Five, for which Wesley wrote the libretto, received the Pulitzer Prize in Music. Other commendations include a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Organization of Black Screenwriters, the Pioneer Award from the National Black Theater of New York, the August Wilson Playwriting Award from the National Black Theater Festival, and the 2020 August Wilson Award from the National Black Writers Conference. Wesley is an associate professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in the Department of Dramatic Writing. He is a board member of the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Newark Performing Arts Corporation at Symphony Hall; a member of the advisory board of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, NY; and sits on the selection committee for the Black Film Festival of the Newark (NJ) Museum of the Arts. He is married to novelist Valerie Wilson Wesley.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 21

A R T I S T P R O F ILE S

Richard Wesley | LIBR E T T I S T

Nataki Garrett | DIR EC T OR Recipient of a 2024 Doris Duke Artist Award, Nataki Garrett is the President and CEO of Ladder Leadership Inc., as well as the Co-Artistic Director of One Nation/One Project. Nataki recently served as the Executive Artistic Director and Artistic Director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) and the Acting Artistic Director of the Denver Center for the Performing Arts. In 2020, she co-founded Professional NonProfit Theater Coalition (PNTC)—a national advocacy coalition that organized non-profit theaters’ efforts to advocate for access to the $15-billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant of historically unprecedented funding from the federal government. Nataki serves as the Chair of the Boards of Directors for Theatre Communications Group and Another Round Another Rally.

Nataki has received numerous awards and recognition for her artistry and leadership throughout her career including a 2022 United States Artists Fellowship. Her vision is to empower artists as leaders and change-makers who transform culture. Opera credits include The Central Park Five (Portland Opera), Sucktion (REDCAT), and Wet (REDCAT). Recent theater credits include Romeo and Juliet (OSF), Confederates (OSF), How to Catch Creation (OSF, Baltimore Center Stage), The Carolyn Bryant Project (CalArts Center for New Performance), and BLKS (Steppenwolf, Woolly Mammoth).

Nataki is very excited and proud to remount this very timely and important project at Detroit Opera. Website: natakigarrett.com/about

Nataki Garrett was partially supported by OPERA America’s Opera Grants for Women Stage Directors and Conductors, generously funded by the Marineau Family Foundation, with additional support by the Co-Ette Club, Inc. P22

Anthony Parnther is in his sixth season as Music Director of California’s San Bernardino Symphony Orchestra. As conductor of the Gateways Festival Orchestra, whose members hail from leading orchestras nationwide, he led the ensemble at both its Chicago debut at Symphony Hall and its sold-out Carnegie Hall debut. A master of multiple genres, Anthony has conducted many of the world’s preeminent artists, who range from Joshua Bell and Jessye Norman to Rihanna and John Legend, as well as many eminent ensembles. These include the Atlanta Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Nashville Symphony, National Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Seattle Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Sydney Symphony, Vancouver Symphony, and Chineke! Orchestra, with whom he made his debut at London’s BBC Proms. Upcoming highlights include his Chicago Symphony debut and a revival of Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, The Central Park Five, at Detroit Opera.

Dedicated to amplifying traditionally underrepresented voices, Anthony has reconstructed and performed orchestral works by Margaret Bonds, Duke Ellington, Zenobia Powell Perry, Florence Price, William Grant Still, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. As well as leading LA Opera’s world premiere of Tamar-kali’s oratorio We Hold These Truths, Anthony has premiered and recorded works by Jon Batiste, Kris Bowers, Chanda Dancy, Anthony Davis, Adolphus Hailstork, Marian Harrison, Philip Herbert, Daniel Kidane, Gary Powell Nash, James Newton, Perry, Price, Taylor, George Walker, Errollyn Wallen, James Wilson, and John Wineglass. For his extensive championing of works by Black, Latino, and women composers, the conductor was profiled in 2015 as a “Local Hero” by Los Angeles’s PBS SoCal/KCET. As one of today’s foremost film conductors, Anthony helms recording sessions for many of the world’s top international feature films and television series, working in close collaboration with some of the most decorated media composers on the scoring stages of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Nashville, Budapest, Glasgow, and London. Recent projects include Avatar: The Way of Water, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Encanto, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Nope, Creed III, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules, The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild, Tenet, American Dad!, Turning Red, Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett, League of Legends, and the Grammywinning Oppenheimer soundtrack. Website: anthonyparnther.com D E T R OI T O P ER A P 2 3

A R T I S T P R O F ILE S

Anthony Parnther | C O NDUC T OR

Freddie Ballentine

| K E V IN R IC H A R DS O N

Hailing from Norfolk, Virginia, Grammy Award-winning tenor Freddie Ballentine was the 2021 recipient of the Kennedy Center’s Marian Anderson Award, and is an alumnus of both the Cafritz Young Artists of Washington National Opera and the Los Angeles Opera’s Domingo-Colburn-Stein Young Artist Program. Admired for his versatility and individuality, Freddie continues a 2024–25 season that includes debuts with the New World Symphony (Harlekin in Der Kaiser von Atlantis, with Stéphane Denève conducting), Austin Opera (Ben Marco in The Manchurian Candidate), Utah Opera (The Witch in Hänsel und Gretel), and Detroit Opera (Kevin Richardson in The Central Park Five). He returns to Dutch National Opera for the world premiere of We Are The Lucky Ones, gives recitals with pianist Kunal Lahiry for Konzerthaus Berlin and Seattle Opera, appears in concert with Pacific Vocal Series, and bows with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Séguin as Melot in Tristan und Isolde. Freddie began the 2023–24 season in a return to Seattle Opera, singing Loge in his first German-language performances of Das Rheingold. He then created the role of Trainer in the highly anticipated world premiere of Jeanine Tesori’s Grounded at Washington National Opera. Two notable engagements at the Metropolitan Opera followed: Remendado in Carrie Cracknell’s new production of Bizet’s Carmen, and Tybalt in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, conducted

by Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Elsewhere during the season, he appeared at Paris’s Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet for a recital with Kunal Lahiry, and joined the Rotterdam Philharmonic for a theatrical concert, Different from Others, with conductor Manoj Kamps. Instagram: @myfreddieballentine

Chaz’men Williams-Ali

| R AY M OND SA N TA N A

Tenor Chaz’men Williams-Ali’s current season includes his return to Washington National Opera as First Prisoner/Florestan (cover) in Fidelio, his appearance with New York Festival of Song in a special project titled My Brother’s Keeper, his Puccini recital with Chicago Opera Theater, and his debut in Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde with Wisconson Youth Symphony. Recent highlights include Cavaradossi in Tosca at Cedar Rapids Opera, Nate in Highway 1, USA in his Los Angeles Opera debut, his return to Rodolfo in La bohème at Florentine Opera, and his Metropolitan Opera debut as Zorn in Die Meistersinger and Spinner (cover) in Fire Shut Up in My Bones, a role he inaugurated in the original production at Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2019. He sang Narraboth in Salome at Madison Opera and Rodolfo at Kentucky Opera following his work as principal tenor at Theater & Orchester Heidelberg in Germany where he appeared as Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Florestan, Canio in Pagliacci, Tebaldo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi, and Der Prinz in Rusalka. The artist made an international debut when he joined English National Opera for the roles of Robbins and Crab Man in Porgy and Bess in their co-production with the Metropolitan Opera and Dutch National Opera, roles he also sang in Amsterdam. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, the artist began his studies at Central Visual and Performing Arts High School, went into Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s Artists-in-Training Program for two years, and then studied voice at the University of Iowa School of Music. Webite: chazmenwilliamsali.com P 24

| KOR E Y W I SE

Markel Reed

| Y USEF SAL A A M

Baritone Markel Reed, a native of Charlotte, North Carolina, has been featured in concerts, recitals, and performances throughout North America and Europe. As a passionate conveyor of the operatic repertoire, Markel is a wonderful interpreter of both classic and contemporary works. Last season, he was seen in his charming portrayal of Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia with Virginia Opera. The following spring, he performed Shawn Okpebholo’s works Two Black Churches and Songs in Flight with the Wheaton College Artist Series, exploring the experiences of Black enslaved and brutalized peoples. Within contemporary opera, Markel originated the role of Chester in the premiere of Terence Blanchard’s acclaimed Fire Shut Up in My Bones with Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL), and later followed the production to the Metropolitan Opera where he covered Adult James in their historic season premiere. He also portrayed Young Emile Griffith, the title role in Blanchard’s Champion, with Boston Lyric Opera. Markel sang in the premiere of Damien Sneed and Karen Chilton’s The Tongue & The Lash at OTSL, where he portrayed “a credible James Baldwin and sang through his argument with power and finesse” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch). Opera Today deemed Markel “a physical dynamo and a vocal delight” for his portrayal of Parson Alltalk in Sneed’s revision of Joplin’s Treemonisha at OTSL, and The Boston Globe said he “sang with magnetic swagger as the fighter in his prime” as Young Emile in Blanchard’s Champion with Boston Lyric Opera. His other recent successes include Joey in The Time of Our Singing with Theater St. Gallen in Switzerland, Marcello in La bohème with Opera Steamboat, and Masetto in Don Giovanni with Opera Omaha. Instagram: @mightiermouse85 D E T R OI T O P ER A P 2 5

A R T I S T P R O F ILE S

Nathan Granner

American tenor Nathan Granner is celebrated for his eloquent voice and commanding stage presence, traversing from the lyrical narratives of classical opera to the bold frontiers of contemporary composition. His recent portrayals of Mario Cavaradossi in Tosca with Opera Orlando and Don José in Carmen with Opera Santa Barbara, alongside his profound depiction of Korey Wise in the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera The Central Park Five with Portland Opera and Long Beach Opera, attest to his versatility and commitment to bringing intricate characters to life with emotional authenticity.

Nathan has recently completed recording two albums for the prestigious Pentatone label, expanding his already rich discography. These releases represent his deepseated respect for the classical canon, and his enthusiasm for exploring modern opera’s expressive new frontiers. Ombre di luce features a collection of resplendent Classical-epoch arias for tenor, accompanied by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Marseille. The other recording, a new version of Gordon Getty’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, promises to be a significant addition to Nathan’s discography following the positive critical and public reception of the 2021 film adaptation of the same opera. The 2024– 25 season includes La bohème with Tacoma Opera and Nathan’s return to Portland Opera as Ullman/Grady in The Shining. Reprising Korey Wise in The Central Park Five and premiering Radames in Aïda, Nathan will debut with Detroit Opera and Dayton Opera, respectively. This season, Nathan will be featured in a new film adaptation of Gordon Getty’s Plump Jack. Instagram: @nathangranner

Justin Hopkins

| A N T R ON M C C R AY

Current and most recent projects of American bass-baritone Justin Hopkins include Sarastro in The Magic Flute, Hobo in Love Life (Opera North), Angelotti in Tosca (Cincinnati Opera), Publio in La clemenza di Tito (Wiener Festwochen, Grand Théâtre de Genève), Antron McCray in Anthony Davis’s The Central Park Five (Detroit Opera), Carl Ekdahl in the world premiere of Mikael Karlsson’s Fanny and Alexander (La Monnaie), Bernstein’s Songfest (Copenhagen Philharmonic Orchestra), Zuniga in Carmen (Austin Opera), Narumov in Pique Dame, Gralsritter in Parsifal, a new production based on Verdi’s Rivoluzione e Nostalgia (La Monnaie), a collaboration with choreographer Jermaine Spivey, Colline in La bohème (Opera Ballet Vlaanderen), and Haydn’s Die Schöpfung (Los Angeles Master Chorale at Walt Disney Concert Hall). Notable past appearances were with Theater St. Gallen, Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Philadelphia, and the Verbier Festival. In concerts he has appeared with the George Enescu Festival, Boston Pops, Philly POPS, Grand Rapids Symphony Pops, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Bard Music Festival, MDR Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, and BBC Concert Orchestra in venues such as Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, and London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall. He has worked with conductors Charles Dutoit, Valery Gergiev, Keith Lockhart, Leon Botstein, Alejo Pérez, Anthony Barrese, Paul Daniel, Paul McCreesh, Paolo Carignani, and Jerome Shannon. He is a prizewinner of the 2012 Lotte Lenya Competition.

YouTube: @jlhopkin

Catherine Martin | A S SI S TA N T D.A.

Praised by The Washington Post for her “gorgeous, warm voice that you want to keep listening to,” American mezzosoprano Catherine Martin continues to make an impact in repertoire ranging from Verdi and Wagner to Strauss and Bellini. Last season, she returned to the Metropolitan Opera to cover Helen Prejean in Dead Man Walking and Preziosilla in La forza del destino. In addition, she made her Atlanta Opera debut as Waltraute in Die Walküre, and she returned to Des Moines Metro Opera to sing Geneviève in Pelléas et Mélisande. This season, she returns to the Met to cover Giulietta in Les contes d’Hoffmann and The Atlanta Opera to sing Juno in Semele, and she joins the Sacramento Philharmonic to sing Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana and Detroit Opera to sing the District Attorney in The Central Park Five. Highlights from recent seasons include her role debut as Fricka in Dayton Opera’s Das Rheingold; Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana with Opera Colorado; her return to Lyric Opera of Chicago to cover Eboli in Don Carlos; Marguerite (cover) in Berlioz’s Le damnation de Faust with the Metropolitan Opera; and performances in various roles from Wagner’s Ring cycle with Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Washington National Opera, Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood, Dallas Symphony, and National Taichung Theater in Taiwan. A native of San Antonio, Texas, Catherine holds her master’s degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and bachelor’s degree from the University of North Texas. Instagram: @talltxmezzo P26

Todd Strange

| T R U M P/FOR EN SIC S OFFIC ER

Todd Strange is a versatile lyric tenor with a distinguished career spanning opera, concert work, musical theater, session singing, and professional ensemble performance. He is a proud member of the Los Angeles Master Chorale and LA Opera and has appeared as a soloist with leading regional opera companies and symphonies across the U.S. and abroad. His credits include principal and supporting roles with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Long Beach Opera, Pacific Opera Project, New York City Opera, Arizona Opera, Opera Santa Barbara, Utah Festival Opera, Ohio Light Opera, and San Diego Opera, among others. A sought-after session singer, Todd has contributed to numerous major film scores, including Wicked, Sing (as the operatic camel), Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Avatar 2, The Lion King, Frozen, Minions, and The Simpsons. His collaborations include work with John Williams and recordings with the LA Phil, LA Master Chorale, Hollywood Scoring, Albany Records, and Ohio Light Opera. In 2022, Todd earned acclaim for his portrayal of Donald Trump in Anthony Davis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera, The Central Park Five, with Long Beach Opera, a role he will reprise in his Detroit Opera debut. Beyond opera, Todd is an accomplished stand-up and sketch comedian, performing regularly at LA’s top comedy clubs, where he seamlessly blends classical music with sharp humor.

Instagram: @strangetenor D E T R OI T O P ER A P 27

A R T I S T P R O F ILE S

Daniel Belcher | T HE M A S QUE/ T HE JUD G E

Grammy Award-winning baritone Daniel Belcher has performed in many of the world’s music capitals, including Paris, London, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, Stuttgart, Amsterdam, Geneva, Madrid, Toronto, Montreal, Tokyo, Seoul, and Houston. With a repertoire of nearly 100 roles, Daniel has championed roles from the Baroque to those composed expressly for him. He came to international attention in 2004 creating the role of Prior Walter in Peter Eötvös’s Angels in America for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris for which he was hailed by London’s The Guardian as “possessing the kind of powerhouse stuff that indicates a star in the making.” He received his Grammy Award in 2011 for the role of Jaufré Rudel in Kaija Saariaho and Amin Maalouf’s L’Amour de loin under the baton of Kent Nagano on the Harmonia Mundi label. He also premiered Saariaho’s Sombre at the Rothko Chapel in Houston. Daniel recently created the roles of Inspector Kildare in Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell’s Elizabeth Cree at Opera Philadelphia, James Addison Mills III in Ricky Ian Gordon and Royce Vavrek’s The House Without a Christmas Tree at Houston Grand Opera (recorded on the Pentatone label), Lord Bellingham in Lori Laitman’s The Scarlet Letter at Opera Colorado (released on the Naxos label), Brian Castner in Jeremy Howard Beck’s The Long Walk at Opera Saratoga, and Robert Kennedy in Robin de Raaff’s Waiting for Miss Monroe in his debut at The Netherlands Opera and Holland Festival. Other world premiere roles include John Brooke in Mark Adamo’s Little Women (released on the Ondine label and recorded by PBS’s Great Performances) and Andy Warhol in Michael Daugherty’s Jackie O (released by Decca on the Argo label). He previously appeared at the Detroit Opera as Father Palmer in Silent Night by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell.

Instagram: @dbelcher1

Brianna J. Robinson

A N T R ON’S M O T HER/K E V IN’S M O T HER/EN SE M BLE

Soprano Brianna J. Robinson, whom The Boston Globe proclaimed as “a radiant voice and presence,” is a native of Ravenna, Ohio. In her 2024–25 season, she is a Resident Artist with the Detroit Opera. During this season, Brianna’s featured role debuts include Annina in La traviata and Antron’s Mother/ Kevin’s Mother/Ensemble in Anthony Davis’s The Central Park Five. She also covers the roles of Violetta in La traviata, Almirena in Rinaldo, and Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte. She is a former Jane & Steven Akin Emerging Artist with Boston Lyric Opera where she had two successful jump-ins—as Julie in Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar, and as Léontine in Chevalier de Saint-George’s The Anonymous Lover. In December 2023, she made her debut at Carnegie Hall with The Cecilia Chorus of New York in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Dona nobis pacem. In May 2024, she was awarded First Prize in the George Shirley Vocal Competition in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Instagram: @brianna.jashai

Kendra F. Beasley

SH A R O NNE SAL A A M/EN SE M BLE

Mezzo-soprano Kendra Faith Beasley, acclaimed by Opera News for her “big voice, powerful at both extremes of the range,” made her debut at Des Moines Metro Opera (DMMO) in the summer of 2024. As an Apprentice Artist with DMMO, Kendra took on the dual roles of Florence McKeller/Mrs. Smithson in the world premiere of Damien Geter and Lila Palmer’s new opera American Apollo, about Thomas Eugene McKeller, a Black hotel worker who served as model and muse for painter John Singer Sargent. In 2023, Kendra captivated audiences with standout performances as Berta in Cincinnati Opera’s Il barbiere di Siviglia and Girlfriend #3 in New Orleans Opera’s Blue. In 2022, Kendra premiered the role of Raksha in Glimmerglass Festival’s innovative adaptation of The Jungle Book, directed by Francesca Zambello. She earned an Artist Diploma from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree in performance from the University of Kentucky. During her Detroit Opera residency, Kendra will perform on the Detroit Opera House main stage and other metro Detroit performance venues.

Instagram: @kfmezzo

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Babatunde Akinboboye

R AY M O ND’S FAT HER/M AT I A S R E Y E S/EN SE M BLE

Babatunde Akinboboye, a Nigerian American baritone, is celebrated for his diverse talents, enthralling stage presence, and innovative approach. He has graced prestigious stages, including the Los Angeles Opera, Portland Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, and Utah Opera. Babatunde’s notable debuts include portraying Niimki in The Industry’s world premiere production of Sweet Land and captivating audiences as Matias Reyes in the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera The Central Park Five. Recent highlights include his performances as Valentin in Detroit Opera’s Faust and Escamillo in Pacific Opera Project’s Carmen. Babatunde remains dedicated to promoting art song and operatic works by African and African American composers, headlining notable events such as the Lagos Chamber of Commerce & Industry awards, where his fusion of opera and traditional African music mesmerized audiences. He has also been a featured performer at esteemed gatherings, including the National Association of Negro Musicians Annual Conference and the African American Art Song Alliance Conference, championing the diversity and richness of classical music. Babatunde’s honors include being a Regional Finalist of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions and a finalist in the International Eisteddfod Vocal Solo Competition in Llangollen, Wales. In December 2018, Babatunde made waves with a viral video that garnered over 10-million views, introducing the world to his groundbreaking fusion genre of classical opera and hip-hop, Hip Hopera. This innovative work caught the attention of respected platforms such as Time.com, Classic FM, MSN.com, and more.

In addition, Babatunde released the acclaimed EP Della Citta, expanding his influence and propelling him to social media stardom as “Babatunde_Hip Hopera.” Embracing his role as an opera influencer, he consistently captivates audiences and enlightens listeners about the beauty and intricacies of the art form from his unique perspective.

Instagram: @babatunde_hiphopera D E T R OI T O P ER A P 2 9

A R T I S T P R O F ILE S

Elliott Paige | A N T R ON’S FAT HER/EN SE M BLE

Tenor Elliott Paige’s recent credits include being a singer on the Grammy Award-winning recording of Terence Blanchard’s Champion with the Metropolitan Opera, and performing as a soloist in X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X with the Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Opera Omaha, Detroit Opera, and Odyssey Opera. Other recent engagements include “The Invisibles” Tenor in The Reef with Berkshire Opera Festival, Aros in Heartbeat Opera’s The Golden Cock(erel), Samiir in Samiir’s Feast with White Snake Projects, and Bobby McCray in Anthony Davis’s The Central Park Five with Portland Opera. Previous season highlights include performing as the Street Person soloist in Bernstein’s MASS at the Kennedy Center, and as Luke Dixon with On Site Opera in their production of What Lies Beneath. Elliott has been an Apprentice Artist with the Santa Fe Opera, where he sang the role of Parpignol in La bohème, and performed as the Quartet Tenor in the world premiere of Today It Rains with Opera Parallèle. Other credits include roles with the Palm Beach Opera, Santa Fe Opera, and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, where he sang the role of Bombur Yambarzal in the world premiere of Jack Perla’s Shalimar the Clown. Instagram: @bigell91

Mariana Sanchez Hernandez | SE T DE SIG N Mariana Sanchez Hernandez is a Mexican-American multidisciplinary artist. She has a background in architecture and earned an MFA at the Yale School of Drama, and since then has been designing sets for theater, opera, and ballet. In 2024 she earned an MA in painting from the Royal College of Art in London. She is based between New York and Mexico. Some of her theater credits include: The Great Privation at Soho Rep; Square Dance at Miami City Ballet; Anatomy of a Suicide at Atlantic Theater; Marys Seacole at Lincoln Center Theater/LCT3; The Central Park Five at Portland Opera; God of Carnage at Milwaukee Rep; Troy and The Winter’s Tale at The Public Theater; Manahatta and War at Yale Repertory Theatre; and unseen, The Copper Children, Manahatta, The River Bride, and All’s Well That Ends Well at Oregon Shakespeare Festival; among many others. Website: marianasanchezdesign.com Wanda Walden | C OS T U M E DE SIG N Portland Opera: Shizue, Beatrice, The Central Park Five.

Portland Center Stage: the ripple, the wave that carried me home, It’s a Wonderful Life, Gem of the Ocean, School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play. Penumbra Theatre (Saint Paul, Minnesota): Paradise Blue.

Tacoma Little Theatre: From the Mississippi Delta. Corrib Theatre: Pass Over. Third Rail Repertory: Infinite Life. Portland Playhouse: Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Notes from the Field, Passing Strange, Amélie, Matilda, The Sounds of Afrolitical Movement, Bella: An American Tall Tale, Barbecue, Chicken & Biscuits, Pipeline, Crowns, How I Learned What I Learned. PassinArt: Black Nativity, God’s Favorite, Blues for an Alabama Sky, Seven Guitars, A Song for Coretta, Two Trains Running. Artists Repertory: Skeleton Crew, The Children, We Are Proud to Present, An Octoroon. Profile Theater: The Oldest Profession, Indecent, Fires in the Mirror, The Secretaries, Mother Courage, Ruined.

Rasean Davonté Johnson | PR O JEC T ION DE SIGN Rasean Davonté Johnson is a video artist and designer of projections for theater, film, and installations. He is owner of the Chicago-based practice eightinfinitystudio specializing in design, video engineering consultation, and content creation for the performing arts. For his work as a theatrical designer he has been awarded the Michael Maggio Emerging Designer Award in 2018 and the Joseph Jefferson Award for Projection Design in 2022 and 2019. Additionally, he was a part of Opera America’s 2017 Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase in Dallas. His design work includes collaborations with numerous institutions including Houston Grand Opera, Portland Opera, Toledo Opera, and Chicago Opera Theater, and internationally with Ningbo Song and Dance Ensemble (China), B-Floor Theatre (Thailand), and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Scotland). He received his MFA from Yale University, and is the Director of Design for Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago.

Website: raseandavontejohnson.com

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Jody Elff | S OUND DE SIG N Jody Elff is a Grammy Award-winning audio engineer, sound artist, and designer whose experience includes work with Yo-Yo Ma, Bang on a Can, Laurie Anderson, Chris Thile, and many others.

Jody’s musical journey spans classical, contemporary, opera, jazz, art, and television. His recording work includes the Yo-Yo Ma/Silk Road Ensemble albums Sing Me Home and American Railroad, Chris Thile’s Laysongs, and Anna Clyne’s Shorthand.

He has provided sound design for LA Phil, Lincoln Center Festival, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and others. His fine-art sound works have been presented at museums and galleries internationally, including collaborations with David Lang and Diller Scofidio + Renfro on Musings on a Glass Box in Paris and The Mile-Long Opera in New York City.

Jody has developed patented audio technologies for real-time, full-quality mixing of high-channel-count music events over distance, and is currently developing a platform for immersive VR live-streaming concert experiences. Website: elff.net Joanne Middleton-Weaver

W IG/M A K EUP DE SIG N

Born in England, Joanne Middleton-Weaver came to the United States in the late 1980s. She began apprenticing with Elsen Associates at what was then Washington Opera, now Washington National Opera. Joanne has since designed at many opera companies throughout the U.S. during her 30-year career: Glimmerglass Opera, Sarasota Opera, Palm Beach Opera, and Des Moines Metro Opera, to name a few. She has designed for Detroit Opera since 1995.

Her credits there include La bohème, The Passenger, Frida, Margaret Garner, Cyrano, Faust, and make-up design for X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.

D E T R OI T O P ER A P 31

A R T I S T P R O F ILE S

Jason Lynch | LIG H T ING DE SIGN Jason Lynch is a Chicago-based lighting designer for dance, opera, theater, and other live performance art. Opera: Dallas Opera, Portland Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Washington National Opera. Off-Broadway: You Are Here: An Evening with Solea Pfeiffer (Audible Theater/Minetta Lane Theatre). Regional: Alley Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Baltimore Center Stage, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, City Theatre Company, Court Theatre, Dallas Theater Center, Denver Center Theatre Company, George Street Playhouse, Geva Theatre Center, Goodman Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, Great Lakes Theater, Gulfshore Playhouse, Guthrie Theater, Huntington Theatre Company, Indiana Repertory Theatre, Kansas City Repertory Theatre, Long Wharf Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Milwaukee Repertory Theater, Northlight Theatre, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Seattle Repertory Theatre, Steppenwolf Theatre, The Old Globe, Trinity Repertory Company. Awards: Joseph Jefferson, Black Theater Alliance/Ira Aldridge (two), Michael Maggio (Emerging Designer), International Black Theatre Festival (Outstanding Achievement in Lighting Design). Website: jasondlynch.com Instagram: @jasonlynch.design

Detroit Opera Needs You! Because of your dedication and support, Detroit Opera continues to provide meaningful artistic experiences for our community and inspires audiences of the future.

Please consider a gift to Detroit Opera this season. Your generosity will ensure that our community has access to the highest caliber of opera productions like The Central Park Five for years to come!

Charitable contributions generate a significant portion of our overall funding and are investments in the future of performing arts in our community. Without donations, opera and dance cannot thrive in southeast Michigan.

Thank you for all the ways you support us!

US E T H E Q R C O D E T O D O N AT E N O W!

V I SI T US AT D E T ROI T O P E R A.O RG/D O N AT E O R GI V E US A C ALL AT 31 3.2 37.3 4 2 6

25/26 SE A SON

SUBSC R IBE TO 25/26 OPER A & DA NC E AT DE T ROI TOPER A.ORG

Thank you to our donors Detroit Opera Honor Roll

Detroit Opera gratefully acknowledges these generous donors for their cumulative lifetime giving. Their transformative support has played a vital role in the history of Detroit Opera since being founded by Dr. David DiChiera as Michigan Opera Theatre in 1971, the building of the Detroit Opera House in 1996, and the metamorphosis into Detroit Opera in 2022 under the leadership of Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director Yuval Sharon.

Their leadership plays an integral part in the company's viability, underwriting quality opera and dance performances as well as award-winning community events. $10,000,000+

$1,000,000+

The William Davidson Foundation

AT&T

Ford Philanthropy

Bank of America

The State of Michigan

Mandell L. and Madeleine H. Berman Foundation

$5,000,000+

Mr.* & Mrs. John A. Boll Sr.

Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan

Compuware Corporation

General Motors

DTE Energy Foundation

The Kresge Foundation John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Robert & RoseAnn Comstock* The Fred A. & Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation

Stellantis

Mrs. Margo Cohen Feinberg & Mr. Robert Feinberg

$2,000,000+

Max M. & Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation

Mr.* & Mrs. Douglas Allison

Mrs. Barbara Frankel* & Mr. Ronald Michalak

Mr. Lee & Mrs. Floy Barthel Marvin, Betty & Joanne Danto Dance Endowment and Marvin & Betty Danto Family Foundation

Mr. & Mrs. Samuel Frankel*

Mr. & Mrs. Herman Frankel

JPMorgan Chase

Lear Corporation Linda Dresner & Ed Levy Jr. Masco Corporation McGregor Fund The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The Skillman Foundation R. Jamison & Karen Williams

KEY

* Deceased

General Motors Corporation Hudson-Webber Foundation Paul Lavins* National Endowment for the Arts Matthew & Mona Simoncini Richard Sonenklar & Gregory Haynes Barbara A. Walkowski Dr. & Mrs. Sam B. Williams* Matilda R. Wilson Fund Every effort has been made to accurately reflect donor names and gift levels.

Should you find an error or omission, please contact Angela Nelson-Heesch at anelsonheesch@detroitopera.org or 313.237.3438 D E T R OI T O P ER A 11

Contributors to Detroit Opera Detroit Opera gratefully acknowledges these generous corporate, foundation, government, and individual donors whose contributions to Detroit Opera were received between January 1, 2024 and February 15, 2025. The generosity of our donors is vital to sustaining Detroit Opera’s position as a valued cultural resource.

Foundations, Corporate & Government Support

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Masco Corporation McGregor Fund MGM Grand Detroit Oliver Dewey Marcks $50,000-$99,999 Foundation J. Addison Bartush and Marion M. Bartush OPERA America Family Foundation Ralph L. and Winifred E. Max M. & Marjorie S. Polk Foundation Fisher Foundation Ida and Conrad H. Smith Hudon-Webber Endowment for MOT Foundation The Mary Thompson Milner Hotels Foundation Foundation

$250,000-$499,999

$25,000-$49,999

$1,000,000+

William Davidson Foundation The State of Michigan

$500,000-$999,999

Fred A. & Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation Ford Foundation

$100,000-$249,999

Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan Ford Philanthropy General Motors Gilbert Family Foundation

Mellon Foundation Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation

Kresge Foundation National Endowment for the Arts The Rattner and Katz Charitable Foundation Matilda R. Wilson Fund

$10,000-$24,999

Detroit Children's Choir DTE Energy Foundation Geoinge Foundation

$5,000-$9,999

C&N Foundation Aaron Copland Fund for Music James and Lynelle Holden Fund Honigman LLP The Karen & Drew Peslar Foundation Louis and Nellie Sieg Fund

Donald R. and Esther Simon Foundation Somerset Collection Charitable Foundation Strum Allesee Family Foundation The Samuel L. Westerman Foundation

$1,000-$4,999

ABM Janitorial Services Joyce Cohn Young Artist Fund Greater Horizons Marjorie and Maxwell Jospey Foundation Josephine Kleiner Foundation Elmira L. Rhein Family Foundation Sigmund and Sophie Rohlik Foundation Seligman Family Foundation

Individual Support

The National Circle

Introduced in 2024, The National Circle is comprised of Detroit Opera’s leading supporters in this pivotal moment, playing an essential role in bringing the transformative power of opera to audiences in our city and across the country. Through their annual support of $25,000 or more, these donors have an unwavering belief in our art form’s ability to affect meaningful change. $100,000+

$50,000-$99,999

Richard & Mona* Alonzo Ethan & Gretchen Davidson Leslie Lazzerin* Linda Dresner & Ed Levy Jr. David & Christine Provost Matthew & Mona Simoncini Richard Sonenklar & Gregory Haynes Barbara A. Walkowski Gary L. Wasserman & Charles A. Kashner

Mrs. Phyllis F. Snow*

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Lorna Thomas, MD Jesse & Yesenia Venegas R. Jamison & Karen Williams

$25,000-$49,999 Dr. Lourdes V. Andaya Lisa S. Applebaum Alex Erdeljan Barbara Lucking Freedman* Patricia Isacson Sabee & David Sabee Mary Kramer

Denise J. Lewis Hon. Jack & Dr. Bettye Arrington Martin Susanne McMillan Allan & Joy Nachman Philanthropic Fund Ann & James B. Nicholson Ebbie & Ayana Parsons Ruth F. Rattner* Barbara Van Dusen Ms. Barbara A. Walkowski KEY * Deceased

The DiChiera Society DiChiera Society members honor the legacy and vision of our company’s founder, David DiChiera, while bolstering our future as one of the most significant and innovative opera and dance organizations in the country with an emphasis on community engagement, accessibility, and artistic risk taking under the leadership of Gary L. Wasserman Artistic Director Yuval Sharon. $10,000-$24,999 Gene P. Bowen

Addison & Deborah Igleheart

Mr. Thomas Cohn

Jody & Tara Ingle

Dr. Glendon M. Gardner & Leslie Landau

Enrico & Kathleen Digirolamo

Andy Levin & Mary Freeman

Mr. Lawrence Glowczewski

Don Manvel

Nina S. Drolias*

Mr. Ronald Michalak

Mr. & Mrs. Robert & Christine Hage

Dr. Raina Ernstoff & Mr. Sanford Hansell

Mrs. L. William Moll

Derek & Pamela Francis* Bharat & Lynn Gandhi

Mr. George & Mrs. Jo Elyn Nyman

Toby Haberman

Ms. Linda Orlans

Michael & Barbara Kratchman

Sara A. Pozzi, Ph.D.

Ms. Mary C. Mazure

Ms. Pam E. Rodgers

Ms. Evelyn Micheletti Donald & Antoinette Morelock Mr. Cyril Moscow William & Wendy Powers Dr. & Mrs. Samir M. Ragheb Dr. Irvin D. Reid & Dr. Pamela Trotman Reid Concetta V. Ross*

Robert & Susan Morris

Waltraud Prechter Janice Ross Evan & Kelsey Ross Mrs. Rosalind B. Sell Michael & Stacey Simmons Mr. Peter C. Stern Ned & Joan Winkelman Ellen Hill Zeringue

Ms. Laurie R. Frankel

Barbara Heller Roberto Kalb & Mane Galoyan Ann Katz Max Lepler & Rex Dotson Mary B. Letts John & Arlene Lewis Nancy & Bud Liebler Stephan & Marian Loginsky Amy McCombs Ms. Mary McGough Benjamin Meeker & Meredith Korneffel, MD Phillip Minch Ali Moiin & William Kupsky Van Momon & Pamela L. Berry

Terry Shea & Seigo Nakao

$3,000-$4,999 Nina Abrams

Prof. Michael Wellman

Gregory & Mary Barkley

George & Nancy Nicholson

$5,000-$9,999 Ms. Christine Ammer

Paul & Lee Blizman

Sally Orley

Bob & Rosemary Brasie

Brock & Katherine L. Plumb

Wayne Brown & Brenda Kee

Carrie & Ted Pryor

Dr. & Mrs. Ronald T. Burkman

Lois & Mark Shaevsky

Dr. Lynne Carter

Frank & Susan Sonye

Dr. Harold M. Arrington Beverly Hall Burns Walter & Lillian Dean Kevin Dennis & Jeremy Zeltzer Maria & David Duey

Albert & Janette Cassar Maurice & Carolyn Cunniffe

Geoffrey Nathan

Susan A. Smith Dr. Gregory E. Stephens, D.O.

Lisa DiChiera

Samuel Thomas & Daniel VanderLey

Ralph & Erica Gerson

Fern Espino & Tom Short

Bret & Susanna Williams

William Hulsker & Aris Urbanes

James & Margo Farber

Dr. Lucia Zamorano

Sally & Michael Feder

Jane Iacobelli

Michael Fisher

Carl & Mary Ann Fontana

D E T R OI T O P ER A 1 3

Friends of Detroit Opera

Every gift helps ensure that opera and dance thrive in our community, and that we share the indescribable experience we feel when the curtain rises. Friends of Detroit Opera are among our most loyal and crucial supporters and receive exclusive benefits with annual gifts of $500 or more. $1,000-$2,999

Richard & Involut Jessup Mrs. Stephanie Germack Kerzic D.L. Anthony, Ph.D. Marc Keshishian & Susanna Szelestey Ms. Geraldine Atkinson Mr. & Mrs. Gerd H Keuffel Martin & Marcia Baum Sam Logan Khaleghi Mr. Stanislaw Bialoglowski Gregory Knas Sandra & Doug Jennifer Lindsay Kott Bitonti Stewart Meria Larson Mr. & Mrs. Mitchell Mr. Loreto A. Manzo Bleznak Ms. Janet Groening Marsh Constance Bodurow Patrick & Patricia Ms. Nicole A. Boelstler McKeever Mrs. Marlene L. Boll Eugene & Lois Miller Marsha Bruhn Dr. Anne Missavage & Mr. Robert Borcherding Ilse Calcagno Craig & Shari Morgan Harriet Clark Ms. Maryanne Mott John & Doreen Cole Harold Munson & Tonino & Sarah Corsetti Libby Berger Sue Cutler & Jeff Fessler Brian Murphy & Toni Carolyn Demps & Sanchez-Murphy Guy Simons Dr. & Mrs. Peter Nickles Shauna Ryder Diggs, MD Joshua & Rachel Opperer Ms. Mary J. Doerr Daniel & Margaret Marla Donovan Pehrson Nell Duke & David Ammer Mark & Kyle Peterson Ms. Judith Ellis Ms. Irene Piccone Marjory Winkelman Shane Pliska Epstein Elizabeth Porter & Paul & Mary Sue Ewing Larry Hickman Joseph Fontana & Michael & Charlene Nada Jurisich-Fontana Prysak Burke & Carol Fossee Rip & Gail Rapson Dr. & Mrs. Clifford Ankur Rungta & Furgison Mayssoun Bydon Carol Gagliardi & Leon & Debbe Saperstein David Flesher Professor Alvin & Arline Geronimus Mrs. Harriet Saperstein Thomas M. Gervasi Mary Schlaff & Allan Gilmour & Sanford Koltonow Eric Jirgens Kingsley & Lurline Sears Mr. Nathaniel Good Susan Sills-Levey & Robert & Ann Greenstone Michael Levey Stuart Grigg Gabriel & Martha Stahl Ms. Carole Hardy Ann Steglich Ms. Mary Anne Stella Fay & Allen Herman Dr. Andrew James Mary Ellen Hoy & Stocking Jim Keller Paul Jednak & Tim Kasunic Andrew J. Sturgess Thomas & Gretchen Anderson

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Manuel Tancer & Claire Stroker Mr. Jon Teeuwissen Jeff & Amy Voigt Stanley Waldon Katina Zaninovich

$750-$999

Frank & Jenny Brzenk Ms. Vera C. Magee Walter & Elizabeth Newgeon Barbara Roden Dennis & Jennifer Varian Rita Winters

$500-$749

Antonia Abbey & James Lee David A. Agius Michael & Katherine Alioto Robert & Catherine Anthony Paul Augustine Wallace Ayotte Ms. Allison Bach & Mr. Michael Cool Ms. Mary Anne Barczak Ms. Kanta Bhambhani Amy & Tyler Bouque Marceline Bright Jonathan Cohn & Daniela Wittmann Patricia Cosgrove Daniel & Susan Drucker Murray & Alice Ehrinpreis Mr. M. Brennan Farrell Daniel H Ferrier Julie Finn & Bradley Rowens Sue Force Yvonne Friday & Stephen Black Erin & John Gianopoulos John Gierak & Dona Tracey Joseph & Lois Gilmore Gil Glassberg & Sandra Seligman Mr. Robert Theodore Goldman

Philip & Martha Gray Paul & Nancy Hillegonds Beth Hoger & Lisa Swem Lawrence John & Lilian Lai Kimberly Johnson Ms. Lee Khachaturian Justin & Joanne Klimko Mr. Alex Koprivica Ms. Cynthia Kratchman William & Jean Kroger Mary Jane & Jeff Kupsky Albert Kurt Mr. John Lovegren & Mr. Daniel Isenschmid John & Kimi Lowe Mrs. Marsha Lynn Mr. Russell Moore Ms. Nancy K. Murray Mr. Ronald Northrup Jane Panikkar Elaine & Bertram Pitt Garry Post & Robert Hill Shawn Rieschl Johnson & Christian Kirby Adam D. Rubin, M.D, Lakeshore Professional Voice Center Mr. Richard Lee Ruby Michael Schon Demetrius Shields Paul & Jill Siatczynski Clara Sumeghy Dr. Geneva Tatem Dr. Gretchen Thams Barbara & Stuart Trager Rennard & Daphne Tucker Ms. Janet Beth Weir Meredith Weston-Band & Jeffery Band Ian D. Wiesner Janice Zeltzer Elliot & Dr. Susan Zeltzer

Gifts in Tribute

We extend a heartfelt thank you to those who generously made gifts to Detroit Opera in honor of or in memory of the special people in their lives, whose names are listed in bold below.

IN HONOR OF Andrew Berg Anne & Robert Berg Wayne S. Brown Dr. Lourdes V. Andaya Philip Brunelle Ethan & Gretchen Davidson Dr. Shauna Ryder Diggs Susan Feder & Todd Gordon Mary Ann & Carl Fontana Barbara & Michael Kratchman Denise J. Lewis Dr. Ali Moiin & Dr. William Kupsky Ann & James Nicholson Naomi Oliphant William & Wendy Powers Ruth F. Rattner Irvin & Pamela Reid John Etsell and Europeras 3&4 Katina Zaninovich Carl & Mary Ann Fontana Nina Abrams Paul & Orvilla Ashely David Feeny Mary Jo & Donald Dawson Barbara E. Camph Holton Shipman Thomas E. Barron Peter Gude Allen A. Lewis Sarah Siwek Wilson Curle Cynthia Gitt Pamela Fontana Michael J. Bartoy Sara Valenti Teresa Taranta Andre Boulanger Robert Wittenberg Theresa Johnson Ellen Jacobowitz Ann & David Conrad Chuck & Sandra Jacobowitz

Dr. Ali Moiin & Dr. William Kupsky Mary Jane Kupsky William & Elizabeth S. Kupsky Allan & Joy Nachman Eliot & Elizabeth Bank Lorna Thomas, MD Paul & Lee Blizman Barbara Walkowski Neal S. Goren Abbie E. Wisusik Michelle Tornopilsky

IN MEMORY OF Harriet Berg Mr. Richard D. Cavaler Harry Cook Ms. Susan Chevalier

Ruth F. Rattner Jody & Gary Astrein Lori Cohn Elle Elder Beth & Earle Erman Ann Fishman Amy Folbe Renee Handelsman David & Rose Handleman Patty Isacson Sabee Ann Katz Barbara & Michael Kratchman Victor Lebovici Jay Levinson Nancy & Bud Liebler Howard Luckoff Alex & Lisa MacDonald Angela Nelson-Heesch Grace Serra William Volz Gary L. Wasserman & Charles A. Kashner

Armando Delicato Judith Gordon & Lawrence Banka Angeline Rooks Jacqueline Shuster Maria McMullen Carol DeVore Aphrodite Roumell Mark DeVore Allan & Joy Nachman Donald Epstein Florence, David & Joyce Schon Marjory Epstein Michael L. Schon Pauline Fucinari Phyllis Snow Martha Chamorro & Fernando Peralta Lisa Gross Mr. Anthony Delsener Carole Heinrich Dr. David & Yvonne Fucinari Kathy & Jack Kennedy Therese, Carole & Margaret Winters Mary Louise Ireland Elizabeth Porter Heather Gehring Sarisa Zoghlin Shawn Rieschl Johnson & Kevin Dennis & Jeremy Zeltzer Christian Kirby Devon Hoover Patricia Cosgrove Joseph Katulic Stuart Grigg George & Ann Marisl Thomas Dickson & Carol Dick

Brenda Kee Dr. Ali Moiin & Dr. William Kupsky

John P. McMullin Alexander Ford Sean & Tori Murphy

Mary Kramer Lois & Mark Shaevsky

Enrico & Olga Petrini Miss Alma M. Petrini

Every effort has been made to accurately reflect donor, honoree, and memorial names for gifts received between January 1, 2024 and February 15, 2025. Should you find an error or omission please contact Reema Mahmood, Manager of Events and Donor Relations at rmahmood@detroitopera.org or 313.237.3267.

D E T R OI T O P ER A 1 5

Avanti Society Members Setting the Stage for Tomorrow

Found in many Italian opera texts, the word avanti means “ahead” or “forward,” and the Avanti Society— Detroit Opera’s planned gift recognition program—is a group of thoughtful donors whose generosity is defined by foresight. By including Detroit Opera in their estate plans, members are leaving lasting gifts which will bring the transformative power of opera and dance to audiences in our community and around the country, well beyond our own lifetimes. Thank you, Avanti Society Members!

Douglas* & Sarah Allison Richard & Mona* Alonzo Dr. Lourdes V. Andaya§ Mr. & Mrs. Agustin Arbulu§ Mr.* & Mrs. Chester Arnold§ Dr. Leora Bar-Levav Mr. & Mrs. Lee Barthel Mr. & Mrs. Brett Batterson§ Mr. & Mrs. Richard Bowlby Mrs. Doreen Bull Mr.* & Mrs. Roy E. Calcagno§ Dr. & Mrs. Thomas E.Carson Dr.* & Mrs. Victor J. Cervenak Father Paul F. Chateau Mary Christner Mr. Gary L. Ciampa Prof. Kenneth Collinson Douglas & Minka Cornelsen Dr. Robert A. Cornette§# Mr. Thomas J. Delaney Walter & Adel Dissett Ms. Mary J. Doerr# Mrs. Helen Ophelia Dove-Jones Marianne T. Endicott§# David & Jennifer Fischer Mr. & Mrs. Herb Fisher§ Derek & Pamela Francis Mrs. Barbara Frankel* & Mr. Ronald Michalak§# Mr. & Mrs. Herman Frankel§# Dr. & Mrs. Byron P. Georgeson§ Albert & Barbara Glover Robert Green Mr. Ernest Gutierrez Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Hagopian Mr. Lawrence W. Hall§ Mr. & Mrs. Jerome Halperin§ Ms. Heather Hamilton Charlene Handleman Preston & Mary Happel Mr. Kenneth E. Hart§ Mr. & Mrs. Eugene L. Hartwig§ Dr. & Mrs. Gerhardt A. Hein Fay & Allen Herman Derek & Karen* Hodgson Andrew & Carol Howell Dr. Cindy Hung§ Eleanor & Alan Israel Ms. Kristin Jaramillo§ Mr. Donald Jensen§ Mr. John Jickling Mr. Patrick J.* & Mrs. Stephanie Germack Kerzic

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Josephine Kessler Edward & Barbara Klarman Mr. & Mrs. Robert Klein# Mr. & Mrs. Erwin H. Klopfer§# Myron & Joyce LaBan Paul Lavins Mr. Max Lepler & Mr. Rex Dotson Linda Dresner & Ed Levy Jr. Mr. Hannan Lis Florence LoPatin Mr. Stephen H. Lord Ms. Denise Lutz Laura & Mitchell Malicki Ms. Jane McKee§ Bruce Miller Drs. Orlando & Dorothy Miller§ Ms. Monica Moffat & Mr. Pat McGuire Drs. Stephen & Barbara Munk Mr. Jonathan F. Orser Ms. Julie A. Owens Mr. Dale J. Pangonis§ Mr. & Mrs. Charles A. Parkhill Mr. Richard M. Raisin§ Ruth F. Rattner*§# Ms. Deborah Remer Dr. Joshua Rest Mr. & Mrs. James Rigby§ Mr. Bryan L. Rives Ms. Patricia Rodzik§ David & Beverly Rorabacher Dulcie Rosenfeld Professor Alvin & Mrs. Harriet Saperstein Ms. Susan Schooner§ Mark & Sally Schwartz Arlene Shaler§ Ms. Ellen Sharp Ms. Edna J Pak Shin Mr. & Mrs. Harold Siebert Mrs. Loretta Skewes Ms. Anne Sullivan Smith Mr.* & Mrs. Richard Starkweather§#+ Ms. Mary Anne Stella Mr. Stanford C. Stoddard Mr. Ronald F. Switzer§ & Jim McClure Lillie Tabor Peter & Ellen Thurber Alice* & Paul Tomboulian Jonathan & Salome E. Walton

Maxwell & Marjorie Jospey Mrs. Josephine Kleiner Misses Phyllis & Selma Korn§* Mr. & Mrs. Arthur We express profound thanks Krolikowski§ to these Avanti Society Mr. Philip Leon members whose planned Dores & Wade McCree gifts to Detroit Opera have Lucie B. Meininger been realized.

Helen M. Miller Robert G. Abgarian Trust Ella M. Montroy Mr. & Mrs. Robert Allesee# Ronald K. Morrison Serena Ailes Stevens Ruth Mott Mr. & Mrs. J. Addison Elizabeth M. Pecsenye Bartush§# Clarice Odgers Percox Trust Mr. & Mrs. Mandell Berman Thomas G. Porter Margaret & Douglas Borden Mitchell Romanowski Charles M. Broh Ms. Joanne B. Rooney Milena T. Brown Concetta Ross The Gladys L. Caldroney Trust Mr. & Mrs. Giles L. & Charlotte Bush Failing Trust Beverly Ross Mary C. Caggegi Ms. Merle H. Scheibner Allen B. Christman Drs. Heinz & Alice Miss Halla F. Claffey Platt Schwarz§ Ms. Virginia M. Clementi Ms. Laura Sias Hon. Avern Cohn* & Mrs. Marge Slezak Ms. Lois Pincus Ms. Phyllis Funk Snow§ Robert C. & RoseAnn B. Edward L. Stahl Comstock Mary Ellen Tappan Charitable Mary Rita Cuddohy Remainder Trust Marjorie E. DeVlieg Dr. Mildred Ponder Stennis Nancy Dewar Margaret D. Thurber James P. Diamond Mr. & Mrs. George & Inge Vincent§# Dr. David DiChiera Herman W. Weinreich Mrs. Karen V. DiChiera Dr. & Mrs. Charles H. Duncan§ J. Ernest Wilde Trust Mrs. Ruth Wilkins Mr. Wayne C. Everly Helen B. Wittenberg Dr. Evelyn J. Fisher Mr. & Mrs. Walter & Mrs. Anne E. Ford Elizabeth Work§ Ms. Pamela R. Francis§ Joseph J. Zafarana Mrs. Rema Frankel Mr. & Mrs. George M. Zeltzer§ Barbara Lucking Freedman The Edward P. Frohlich Trust The Priscilla A.B. KEY Goodell Trust § Founding Members Freda K. Goodman Trust Priscilla R. Greenberg, Ph.D.§# # Touch the Future donors Maliha Hamady * Deceased Patricia Hobar Mary Adelaide Hester Trust Membership in the Avanti Society is open Ms. Nancy B. Henk to all who wish to declare Gordon V. Hoialmen Trust their intention for a planned Carl J. Huss gift to Detroit Opera.

Mr. John Jesser Call Demetrius Shields to H. Barbara Johnston learn more, 313.309.8255.

Susan Weidinger Mr. Andrew Wise Larry* & Mary Lou Zangerle

Orchestra

Detroit Federation of Musicians, Local #5, of the American Federation of Musicians

V IOLIN

C ELLO

BA SS OO N

Eliot Heaton

Ivana Biliskov

Daniel Fendrick

Daniel Stachyra

Benjamin Maxwell

Open Position

Concertmaster (on leave) Interim Concertmaster

Yuri Popowycz

Acting Asst. Concertmaster

Principal

Andrea Yun Open Position

Emelyn Bashour

Principal Second Violin

Emily Barkakati Anna Bittar-Weller Molly Hughes Bryan Johnston Henrik Karapetyan

BA SS

Derek Weller

Jenny Wan Andrew Wu

Clark Suttle HARP

Open Position

Jacqueline Hanson Scott Stefanko Open Position

T RU M PE T Principal

Mark Davis

Principal

T RO M BO N E FLU T E

Open Position Principal

Open Position Principal

Dustin Nguyen

Open Position

V IOL A Principal

Carrie Banfield-Taplin

David Ammer

Second

John Madison

Principal

Principal

Velda Kelly Beth Kirton

HORN

Colin Bianchi

Open Position

Acting Asst. Concertmaster

Principal

OBOE

T I M PA NI

Eric Stoss Principal

Eli Stefanacci Principal

Open Position Second

PER C USSIO N

John Dorsey Principal

CL A R IN E T

Roi Karni Principal

J. William King

D E T R OI T O P ER A 17

Administration & Staff LEADERSHIP

DEVELOPMENT

Patty Isacson Sabee, President & CEO

Juliano Bitonti Stewart, Director of Development

Yuval Sharon, Gary L.Wasserman Artistic Director Roberto Kalb, Music Director Andrew Berg, Chief Development Officer Daniel T. Brinker, General Manager, Detroit Opera House & Parking Center Shawn Rieschl Johnson, Chief Programming & Production Officer Jon Teeuwissen, Artistic Advisor for Dance

Chelsea S. Kotula, Director of Institutional Giving Angela Nelson-Heesch, Director, Data Analytics & Operations Katrina Fasulo, Associate Director, Individual Giving Valentino Peacock, Manager of Data & Operations

Samantha Teter, Chief Marketing Officer

Reema Mahmood, Manager of Events and Donor Relations

Ataul Usman, Senior Director of Human Resources

Demetrius Shields, Manager of Individual Giving

ADMINISTRATION

EDUCATION

William Austin, Executive Assistant

Branden Hood, Director of Education

Christy Gray, Office Administrator

Alaina Brown, Program Coordinator: Education & Community Programs

ARTISTIC DEPARTMENT Nathalie Doucet, Head of Music & Director of Detroit Opera Resident Artist Program

FACILITIES Vanessa Boyd, Facilities Manager

Elizabeth Anderson, Artistic Administrator

Juan Benavides, Building Engineer

Jessie Neilson, Program Coordinator, Resident Artist Program

Kevie Crumb, Facilities & Event Technician

Melany Janer, Administrative Assistant

DANCE Kim Smith, Dance Administrator

DETROIT OPERA YOUTH CHORUS Suzanne Mallare Acton, Director Twannette Nash, Chorus Administrator Jane Arvidson Panikkar, Preparatory Chorus Conductor Rebecca O-G Eaddy, Principal Chorus Conductor Maria Cimarelli, Preparatory Chorus Accompanist Joseph Jackson, Principal Chorus Accompanist

FINANCE Kimberley Burgess, Accountant Rita Winters, Accountant

HUMAN RESOURCES Josh Kozakowski, Human Resources Coordinator

MARKETING/COMMUNICATIONS Anna Herscher, Lead Graphic Designer Jennifer Melick, Communications & Media Relations Manager Deirdre Michael, Website Administrator Position is supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

Austin Richey, Digital Media Manager & Storyteller Arthur White, Director of Community & Audience Engagement

MUSIC DEPARTMENT Suzanne Mallare Acton, Assistant Music Director/Chorus Master Molly Hughes, Orchestra Personnel Manager 18

Jean Posekany, Orchestra Librarian

PRODUCTION

SAFETY AND SECURITY

Elizabeth Anderson, Production Coordinator

Rock Monroe, Director of Safety & Security

Kathleen Bennett, Production Finance Administrator

Lieutenant Lorraine Monroe

Jeff Beyersdorf, Technical Director Eden Cope, Assistant Technical Director Brian Dambacher, Production Manager Monika Essen, Property Master Suzanne Hanna, Costume Director Kaila Madison, Technical Assistant Brodrick Whittley, Assistant Technical Director COSTUMES Suzanne Hanna, Costume Director

Sergeant Demetrius Newbold Officer Gary Cabean Officer A.M. Hightower Officer Sullivan Horton Officer Terrence Hunter Officer Vernon Smith

TICKETING & BOX OFFICE Amy Brown, Director of Ticketing Operations Stephanie Stoiko, Assistant Box Office Manager

Michaela Tanskley, Wardrobe Supervisor

Evan Carr, System Administrator

Patricia Sova Jr., First Hand

Emily Lange, Box Office Associate

Mary Ellen Shuffett, Fitting Assistant

Chris Simpson, Box Office Associate

Maureen Abele, Dylan McBride, Paul Moran, Lupe Vazquez, Stitchers

Ellen Smith, Group Sales Associate

WIGS & MAKEUP

Così fan tutte Erika Broderdorf, Local Crew Coordinator Vanessa Cassidy, Kaitlyn Denzler, Mallory Maxton, Nicole Pangas, Theo Place, Cedasha Randolph, Shannon Schoenberg, Denitra Townsend, Wig & Makeup Crew

VENUE OPERATIONS Alexis Means, Director of Operations & Patron Experiences Holly Clement, Senior Manager of Events & Rentals Jennifer George-Consiglio, Manager of Venue Operations Michael Hauser, Curator of History & Architecture

Dayna Winalis, Swing

Kathie Booth, Volunteer Coordinator

The Central Park Five

USHERS

Erika Broderdorf, Local Crew Coordinator Vanessa Cassidy, Denitra Gregory, Nicole Pangas, Theo Place, Cedasha Randolph, Dayna Winalis, Jessica Wood, Wig & Makeup Crew Carol Taylor, Swing STAGE CREW John Kinsora, Head Carpenter Jerome Bowie, Interim Head Electrician Pat McGee, Head Propertyman Chris Baker, Head of Sound

Max Aghili, Christine Berryman, Ellen Bishop, Kathie Booth, Lori Burkhardt, Randall Davis, Erin G-Doakes, Suzanne Erbes, Pamela Fergusson, Jo-Ann Hale, Sue Hargrave, Myrna Mazure, Ennis Mcgee, Steven McReynolds, Heddie O’Connor, Bill Ried, Kimberly Ried, Edna Rubin, Ida Vance, Sheryl Weinan-Yee

Pat Tobin, Head Flyman Dee Dorsey, Surtitle Operator Mary Ellen Shuffett, Head of Wardrobe IATSE Local #38 Stage Crew IATSE Local #786 Wardrobe D E T R OI T O P ER A 1 9

IN CASE OF EMERGENCY Please observe the lighted exit signs located throughout the theater. In the event of an emergency, remain calm and walk, do not run, to the nearest exit.

Ushers and security personnel are trained to assist. An emergency medical technician (EMT) is on-site during most events. Contact an usher or staff member if you need medical assistance.

GUEST SERVICES­: Vincent Lobby and Broadway Lounge There are a variety of amenities for your comfort and use located in both guest services locations. Wheelchairs, booster seats*, earplugs, assisted listening devices, feminine hygiene products, basic first aid items, and more are complimentary and available for your convenience. Coat check is also available.

The Vincent Lobby is located on the Madison Street side of the building and the Broadway Lounge is located on the Broadway Street side of the building. *Limited quantity

PHOTOGRAPHY, RECORDING, AND CELL PHONE USE Photography and/or recording during any performance is strictly prohibited.

Photographs taken in the lobby areas, before or after a performance, and during intermission are welcome. As a courtesy to all guests, please turn off all electronic devices and refrain from use during the performance.

RESTROOMS Women’s restrooms are located off the Ford Lobby (Broadway Street entrance) and down the stairs, and on third floor (Madison Street entrance).

Men’s restrooms are located under the Grand Staircase and on the third floor (Broadway Street side). There are two sets of elevators or stairs available to access all third-floor restrooms. All third-floor restrooms are wheelchair accessible (women’s restroom, press 3R in the elevator). There are single-use unisex wheelchair accessible restrooms on the first floor of the Broadway Street side of the building and the Madison Street side of the building. There is also a wheelchair accessible women’s restroom on the Broadway Street side of the building.

NO SMOKING The Detroit Opera House is a non-smoking facility.

This includes e-cigarettes, vapes, and other “smokeless” products.

USHERS Ushers are stationed throughout the building to assist patrons as needed.

Please direct questions, concerns, and feedback to them during your visit.

Enjoy volunteering? Please go to guest services or the Detroit Opera website, detroitopera.org/volunteers, for information on becoming a volunteer.

LOST AND FOUND During the performance, lost and found is located in guest services.

Unclaimed items are logged and taken to the Safety and Security office after each performance. To inquire about a misplaced or lost item, please call 313.961.3500. Items left over 30 days will be discarded or donated.

RECORDING IN PROGRESS Entry and presence on the event premises constitute your consent to be photographed, filmed, and/or otherwise recorded, and to the release, publication, exhibition, or reproduction of any and all recorded media for any purpose whatsoever in perpetuity in connection with Detroit Opera and its initiatives. By entering the event premises, you waive and release any claims you may have related to the use of recorded media of you at the event.

20

155 West Congress Detroit, Michigan • (313) 962-0277 • www.thelondonchophouse.com

Make your event spectacular!

THE

BEAUBIEN ROOM 400 Monroe St.

Detroit, MI 48226 (313) 963-1400

internationalbanquets.com

Opera has been described as an art form that tells a story through music and singing. Detroit Opera is innovating new and exciting ways to tell those stories.

At The Whitney, we see architecture as another art form that tells a story, in our case through our 125-year-old Romanesque-style mansion, one of the last remaining mansions that once lined Woodward Avenue. It is a true reflection of Old Detroit.

Before your next opera, or whenever the urge hits you, come visit our mansion. We promise that the welcoming reception you’ll receive, the food and drink you’ll enjoy, and the ambiance you’ll experience, will make you think you’ve gone back in time.

Pre-Theater Dining, Sunday Brunch or Afternoon Tea—It’s a story you won’t forget.

4421 Woodward Avenue | 313.832.5700 | TheWhitney.com