JUILLIARD APPOINTS STEPHEN WADSWORTH, STAGE DIRECTOR, WRITER, AND EDUCATOR, THE JAMES S. MARCUS FACULTY FELLOW: DIRECTOR OF OPERA STUDIES FOR THE JUILLIARD OPERA CENTER

        The Juilliard School has appointed Stephen Wadsworth, stage director, writer and educator, as the James S. Marcus Faculty Fellow: Director of Opera Studies, for the Juilliard Opera Center (JOC), effective January 2008. In this newly-created full-time position, Mr. Wadsworth will oversee the curriculum for JOC, lead a new intensive acting program together with Juilliard faculty member Eve Shapiro, work closely with the young artists in JOC, and direct some JOC productions. The Juilliard Opera Center is a tuition-free program providing a bridge between conservatory training and the professional world. Singers enrolled in the program earn an Artist Diploma in Opera Studies.On announcing the appointment, Brian Zeger, Artistic Director of Juilliard’s Vocal Arts Program, remarked: "Stephen brings to Juilliard a rare combination of talents: he is a world-class director and a brilliant and insightful teacher and coach, who has played a key role in the lives and careers of many great American singers. Under his leadership, and particularly with his commitment to intensive acting training, the Juilliard Opera Center will provide a unique education for singers on the brink of a professional career. This will be the first program I know of that places equal emphasis on dramatic, vocal and musical crafts. This will give us the opportunity to develop an ensemble of singers that can answer the demands of the professional world for gifted, versatile performers with strongly developed artistic personalities.”

        The distinguished soprano Renée Fleming, a Juilliard alumna and a colleague of Stephen Wadsworth hailed the announcement: “Having had the great fortune of graduating from the Juilliard Opera Center, and having recently and happily collaborated with Stephen Wadsworth on Handel’s Rodelinda at the Metropolitan Opera, I can speak directly to this ideally suited pairing. Stephen brings enormous experience in both theater and opera, and a fresh, honest approach to his directorial work. He is also an acknowledged, brilliant teacher, encouraging both his performers and students to dig deeper, and find the emotional heart of every character and situation. My experience with him was one of the most satisfying of my career. How fortunate, then, that these young talents should benefit from the very best theatrical and operatic education our generation has to offer: Stephen Wadsworth will bring a  creative vision to JOC, further enhancing this program which has fostered so many on the difficult road to operatic performance.”

        Mr. Wadsworth commented, “I look forward to building a new kind of opera-training program at Juilliard. Recently I’ve gotten hungry for longer-term, more intensive training than I’ve been able to do in short stints as a guest teacher. I’m interested in actors who are optimally free in mind and body, and emotionally fearless, and clearly the opera world is now demanding them. Juilliard, arguably our greatest conservatory, at the epicenter of the musical world, is well placed to pioneer this kind of training. With its jaw-dropping musical staff, wonderful voice teachers, fabulous interdisciplinary faculty, much-envied theater, and that elegant musician and thinker Brian Zeger leading the Vocal Arts program, nothing can stop us.”

        Stephen Wadsworth has taught acting to singers since 1980. This season marks the 25th anniversary of his association with the Lindemann Young Artists Development Program at the Metropolitan Opera, where he is a regular guest instructor. Mr. Wadsworth was previously a faculty member of the Manhattan School of Music (1989- 91); has taught in the young artist programs at Lyric Opera of Chicago, Canadian Opera Company and Houston Grand Opera; and given master classes at universities and conservatories all over the country. For the last two years he has completed two intensive residencies each season with the Juilliard Opera Center.

        As a director Mr. Wadsworth divides his time between opera and spoken theater, and is recognized as a leading voice of his generation. Known as a quietly radical force whose patient, detailed and uncompromising expectations for singing actors has gradually and insistently raised the bar for operatic performers, he has been praised for his seamless integration of all elements of craft; American Theatre magazine called him “one of the most influential American stage directors of the 21st century.” Mr. Wadsworth’s productions of Aeschylus, Shakespeare, Molière, Marivaux, Goldoni, Wilde and Shaw, for theaters all over the U.S., have established him as a master of classical style. Mr. Wadsworth made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 2004 with Rodelinda starring Ms. Fleming and David Daniels, conducted by Harry Bicket. He returns to the Met this fall with a new Iphigénie en Tauride starring Susan Graham and Placido Domingo, conducted by Louis Langrée.

        He has staged operas at La Scala, the Vienna State Opera, Covent Garden, the Edinburgh Festival, the Netherlands Opera, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Los Angeles Opera, and many other companies, notably including Seattle Opera, for whom he has created ten productions, including a noted Orphée et Eurydice in collaboration with Mark Morris, and a Ring cycle (due next in 2009) designed by his frequent collaborators Thomas Lynch (sets), Martin Pakledinaz (costumes) and Peter Kaczorowski (lighting). With the late Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson, another long-term collaborator, Mr. Wadsworth created productions of Le nozze di Figaro, La clemenza di Tito, Peter Lieberson’s Ashoka’s Dream and of course Handel’s Xerxes, notably for Ms. Hunt-Lieberson’s New Yorkopera debut at New York City Opera in 1997 and many other companies. In the 1980s Mr. Wadsworth was Co-Artistic Director, with Francesca Zambello, of the Skylight Opera Theatre in Milwaukee. Their diverse repertoire and a virtuoso ensemble of players brought international attention to that small, maverick organization. Mr. Wadsworth’s cyclical production of Monteverdi’s three surviving operas in 1988 was a highlight of his tenure there.

        In 2001 Mr. Wadsworth directed Aeschylus’ Oresteia plays as well as Wagner’s Ring. Intrigued by Wagner’s absorption of Aeschylus, Mr. Wadsworth brought about a new production of the Oresteia to open the Berkeley Repertory Theatre’s new Roda Theatre. He co-directed the plays with Tony Taccone and, in collaboration with Robert Fagles, created the adaptation of Mr. Fagles’ award-winning translations for the occasion. Such interdisciplinary work, which is inspired and informed by a wide-ranging exploration of other art forms and of the relationship between aesthetics and history, is typical of Mr. Wadsworth’s canon of work. He recently directed the Aeschylus Agamemnon starring Tyne Daly for the Getty Villa in Los Angeles, where he has been consulting on a long-term plan to curate ancient dramatic texts, and where he will direct a play in the new outdoor amphitheater in summer 2008.

        Mr. Wadsworth wrote the libretto for the opera A Quiet Place with Leonard Bernstein and has made important translations of plays and operas by Monteverdi, Molière, Handel, Marivaux, Goldoni and Mozart. The French government recently named him a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters for his groundbreaking work— as scholar, writer and director—on the plays of Marivaux and Molière. His recent reconstruction of Molière’s Don Juan has excited new interest in this seminal text on both sides of the Atlantic; his reimagining of this much-censored and bowdlerized work has helped clarify one of the great mysteries of French literature. It will be published in 2008 by Smith and Kraus, who also have published his landmark series of Marivaux translations as Marivaux: Three Plays. He has written the story for a new opera, Amelia, due at Seattle Opera in 2010 with music by Juilliard alumnus Daron Hagen and libretto by the poet Gardner McFall.

        Mr. Wadsworth also has served as dramaturg and director for a number of new works, among these Mr. Lieberson’s Ashoka’s Dream, Mr. Hagen’s Shining Brow, Beth Henley’s play Impossible Marriage and Francesca Faridany’s Schnitzler adaptation, Fräulein Else. He recently has served as script consultant for the Sundance Institute and New Line Cinema. Mr. Wadsworth began his career as a journalist in the 1970s; he was an editor of Opera News and a contributing editor of Saturday Review and wrote frequently for The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Opera, and other magazines and journals here and abroad.

About the Juilliard Opera Center

        The Juilliard Opera Center is comprised of singers enrolled in the Artist Diploma program in Opera Studies. The advanced singers of the Juilliard Opera Center perform in two fully staged opera productions on the main stage of Juilliard’s Peter Jay Sharp Theater. Emphasis is placed on training for opera careers. Juilliard singers participate in recital, song, oratorio, chamber music concerts, and special projects proposed by students and faculty.