Act I

A day on Alcina’s Magic Island

Bradamante, disguised as her own brother, Ricciardo, is in search of her fiancé, Ruggiero. She is accompanied by her guardian, Melisso. They land on the magic island that is ruled by the sorceress Alcina, who has enchanted Ruggiero with her charms. Meanwhile, Bradamante and Melisso are met by Alcina’s sister, Morgana, who, not realizing that Bradamante is only disguised as a man, falls in love with “him.”

Bradamante soon meets Alcina and Ruggiero, who have become inseparable. Alcina welcomes Bradamante and Melisso and declares her love for Ruggiero. Meanwhile, young Oberto, who has come searching for his father, Astolfo, asks Melisso and Bradamante if they know what has happened to him. They resist telling him that his father was Alcina’s lover, who was turned into an animal when she grew tired of him.

Bradamante, still disguised as Ricciardo, scolds Ruggiero for his faithlessness, but Ruggiero only mocks “him.” He swears that he will never leave Alcina. Rejected by Ruggiero and pursued by Morgana, Bradamante now meets Morgana’s jealous lover, Oronte, and narrowly avoids having a duel with him.

Using Oronte’s jealousy as an excuse, Morgana rejects him. Oronte in revenge tells Ruggiero that Alcina has fallen in love with Ricciardo/Bradamante and, like all her former lovers, Ruggiero will soon be transformed into an animal by the sorceress. Ruggiero confronts Alcina in front of “Ricciardo.” Offended that he thinks she is unfaithful, Alcina leaves. Bradamante tries to reveal her true identity to Ruggiero, who does not believe her. He urges Alcina to prove her love by getting rid of his rival. Out of desperation, Bradamante, still disguised as Ricciardo, throws herself into Morgana’s arms.

Act II

That night

Ruggiero is looking for Alcina. Melisso meanwhile disguises himself as Ruggiero’s former tutor, Atlante, and gives him a magic ring. The ring undoes the spell that Alcina has cast over Ruggiero. Freed of the spell, he immediately desires to see his beloved Bradamante again. When she once again reveals her true identity, he decides that this is another of Alcina’s spells and spurns her. Eventually, Ruggiero begins to see what has happened. Meanwhile, Alcina and Morgana both sense that something has changed in the men they love. When Oronte tells them that Ruggiero is secretly getting ready to leave with Bradamante, Alcina is heartbroken. Morgana, however, refuses to believe that she has been betrayed, but when she hears Bradamante and Ruggiero talking together, she realizes that she been betrayed twice: by a woman disguised as a man and who also lied to her about being in love. As Ruggiero prepares to leave the magic world, Alcina tries to conjure up spirits to help her regain his love. As the act ends, she curses her magic powers and falls into a deep and troubled sleep.

Act III

The next morning

Morgana admits that she still has feelings for Oronte, who, in turn, forgives her inconstancy. Alcina fails in her last desperate attempt to keep Ruggiero’s affections. He is determined to gain his freedom by force, if necessary. Alcina tries to stop him with her magic powers. Ultimately, Alcina’s forces are beaten by Ruggiero and his allies. Powerless and seeking revenge, she tries to force Oberto to kill his own father. Instead, Oberto turns on Alcina; with Ruggiero also prepared to kill Alcina, her magic kingdom collapses. In the end, Ruggiero is celebrated as the liberator of all those who were enslaved by Alcina’s power.

by Chas Rader-Shieber

There is great beauty, allure, and a certain kind of magic in the theater.

We are momentarily transported, seduced, and even transformed by its enchantments. But as the curtain falls at the end, we realize that the dream is short lived, and we return to our own lives, hopefully enlightened by the experience—perhaps even our truer selves.

In this production, Alcina’s magical island is the world of the theater itself. She uses its elaborately painted visions and its surface beauty to trap and imprison the men she so desperately needs to feed her desire to be loved. Once the illusion is discovered, revealed, and ultimately destroyed, her true nature is ours to see: sad, but profoundly human.

Handel is the master of combining the comic, dramatic, romantic, and the disarmingly poignant. In Alcina, he offers a spectacular range of emotional truths and a surprisingly moving cast of characters—more like us than we might really want to admit.

by Kirby Haugland

When Handel wrote Alcina, he had already composed nearly 30 operas for London audiences, and the appeal of Italian opera seria was beginning to wane. Handel’s recent works had seen few performances, but Alcina was different. Premiering on April 16, 1735, at John Rich’s new Covent Garden Theatre, it was performed 18 times and revived the following season. Anna Strada del Pò sang the title role opposite castrato Giovanni Carestini as Ruggiero. Several dance interludes were interspersed in the original production to illustrate scenes like Alcina’s magical court and her feverish dreams after Act II. One performance nearly caused a riot when King George II would not allow an encore from dancer Marie Sallé despite the audience’s demands. Subsequent productions generally cut many of these instrumental dances, which are somewhat out of place in the opera seria genre, despite their popularity with the London audiences.

Like many of Handel’s operas, Alcina uses a borrowed libretto, in this case from Riccardo Broschi’s 1728 L’isola di Alcina. The story comes from Ludovico Ariosto’s sixteenth-century epic poem Orlando furioso, which tells tales of Orlando and other knights during Charlemagne’s war against the invading Muslim Saracens. Among the poem’s many characters is Ruggiero, an orphan raised as a Saracen by the wizard Atlante. He falls in love with the Christian warrior Bradamante and eventually converts to marry her, forming a mythical bloodline for Ariosto’s patron Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. Early in the poem, Ruggiero is taken by the hippogryph to Alcina and Morgana’s island. He meets the knight Astolfo, who has been turned into a myrtle and who warns him of the wily sorceress sisters and their fickle love. However, Ruggiero still falls under Alcina’s spell when he inadvertently fights a battle on her behalf. Bradamante searches far and wide for her lover before asking the good sorceress Melissa for help. Melissa travels to the island and restores Ruggiero to his senses with her magical ring, helping him escape and return to Bradamante.

The opera primarily diverges from Ariosto’s story through its focus on Alcina, who becomes its tragic central figure. Despite her capricious abuse of men in the past, her love for Ruggiero is real. Her aria “Ah! mio cor!” upon learning that Ruggiero is preparing to flee, makes full use of the da capo form to express her pain. In the opening Andante larghetto she plaintively calls to the gods and stars, begging to know why her love has betrayed her. On the words “alone, alone in tears,” she jumps between octaves and descends chromatically, emphasizing her desolation and recalling the classic lament motive of a descending tetrachord. The middle section brings a dramatic contrast. Furious strings underscore Alcina’s shift to rage as she vows that Ruggiero will either come back to her or suffer eternally. In the da capo, her sorrow returns, driving home her impotence. While she might vow revenge, all Alcina really wants is for her love to be reciprocated.

When the Act II finale comes, Alcina sings the only accompanied recitative in the entire opera as she futilely attempts to cast another spell on Ruggiero. A chordal background coalesces into unison sixteenth notes as she begins her incantation. But the spirits refuse to answer, and all the strings except for colla parte violins desert her. The incipit of Alcina’s subsequent aria “Ombre pallide” echoes the chromatically tinged octaves on “alone” from her earlier lament, as she realizes that her isolation is permanent.

The opera’s emotional climax is its sole trio “Non è amor, nè gelosia,” when Alcina attempts one last time to get Ruggiero back from Bradamante. Instead of a dialogue in recitative, we hear a synthesis: a final fully orchestrated da capo “aria,” through which Alcina’s appeals to mercy and warnings of the future are soundly rejected by the reunited couple. Handel saved his technical flourishes for the specific moments that mark Alcina’s fall, and after the Act III trio, the opera comes swiftly to its close. Ruggiero is also granted orchestral novelty by Handel through the addition of flutes to “Mio bel tesoro” and horns to “Stà nell’ Ircana pietrosa tana.” Their extra orchestral color helps emphasize Ruggiero’s deception and his return to the role of the hero.

Through the music sung by Alcina, Ruggiero, and the opera’s other characters, Handel gave voice to the many facets of love. His success in doing so made Alcina popular during his lifetime and has established it in the modern repertory since its revival in the mid-twentieth century.

Arthur Fagen has been professor of orchestral conducting at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music since 2008, where he is currently chair of the Orchestral Conducting Department.Additionally, he has been music director of the Atlanta Opera since 2010.

Fagen was born in New York, where he began his conducting studies with Laszlo Halasz. Further studies continued at the Curtis Institute, under the guidance of Max Rudolf, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and with Hans Swarowsky. A former assistant of both Christoph von Dohnányi (Frankfurt Opera) and James Levine (Metropolitan Opera), Fagen’s career has been marked by a string of notable appearances. He has conducted opera productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, Metropolitan Opera, Munich State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Berlin, New York City Opera, Theatre Capitole de Toulouse, Bordeaux Opera, Frankfurt Opera, Staatstheater Stuttgart, New Israeli Opera, Baltimore Opera, Edmonton Opera, Spoleto Festival, Teatro Colon Buenos Aires, Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, and Stadttheater Bozen. From 1998 to 2001, he was invited regularly as guest conductor at the Vienna State Opera. On the concert podium, Fagen has appeared with internationally known orchestras including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie, the Czech Philharmonic, Munich Radio Orchestra, Tokyo Philharmonic, RAI Orchestras (Torino, Naples, Milano, Roma), the Bergen Philharmonic, Prague Spring Festival, the Dutch Radio Orchestra, Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Fagen has an opera repertory of more than 75 works. He has served as principal conductor in Kassel and Brunswick, as chief conductor of the Flanders Opera of Antwerp and Ghent, as music director of the Queens Symphony Orchestra, and as a member of the conducting staff of the Chicago Lyric Opera.

From 2002 to 2007, he was music director of the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra and the Dortmund Opera. Following his successful concerts with the Dortmund Philharmonic at the Grosse Festspielhaus in Salzburg, Fagen and the Dortmund Philharmonic were invited to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Palais de Beaux Arts in Brussels, and to Salzburg, Beijing, and Shanghai. He conducted in that period, among others, new opera productions of Siegfried, Götterdämmerung, and two Ring Cycles.

Fagen conducted a new production of Turandot at the Atlanta Opera in 2007, opening the season with enormous success and inaugurating the new opera house, the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Center. Soon afterward in Atlanta, he conducted the contemporary opera Cold Sassy Tree by Carlisle Floyd.

He was first-prize winner of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra Conductors Competition, as well as a prize winner of the Gino Marinuzzi International Conductors’ Competition in Italy.

Fagen has recorded for BMG, Bayerischer Rundfunk, SFB, and WDR Cologne. He records regularly for Naxos, for which he has completed the six symphonies of Bohuslav Martinů. The recent Naxos recording of Martinů’s piano concertos has been awarded an Editor’s Choice award in the March 2010 issue of Gramophone magazine.

Stage director Chas Rader-Shieber’s recent work includes new productions of La Traviata for Boston Lyric Opera, Giulio Cesare for Wolf Trap Opera, Rinaldo for Portland Opera, and Lehar’s Die Lustige Witwe for Staatstheater Darmstadt. His work has been seen at the opera companies of Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Houston, Glimmerglass, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Minnesota, and Vancouver, as well as at Washington National Opera, New York City Opera, and the Spoleto Festival, among others. Having made a specialty of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century operas, he has directed Mozart’s Idomeneo, La Clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte, Le nozze di Figaro, Il re pastore, and Così fan tutte, and Handel’s Giulio Cesare, Semele, Ariodante, Acis and Galatea, Imeneo, Alcina, Xerxes, Partenope, Tolomeo, and Flavio in addition to works by Monteverdi, Cavalli, Purcell, Charpentier, and Gluck. Upcoming work includes Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos for Opera Philadelphia, The Abduction from the Seraglio for Des Moines Metro Opera, and Gretry’s L’Amant Jaloux for Pinchgut Opera in Sydney.

Patrick Mero is the head of lighting for IU Opera and Ballet Theater. He has designed the lighting for La Traviata, H.M.S Pinafore, Le Nozze di Figaro, Werther, Falstaff, Xerxes, Don Giovanni, Albert Herring, La Bohème, Tosca, L’Italiana in Algeri, West Side Story, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi, and Alcina. He has also done extensive design work for the Jacobs School of Music Ballet Department, the IU African American Art Institute’s Dance Ensemble, and Cardinal Stage Company. In addition to his work in Bloomington, he has worked at Spoleto Festival USA. Mero originally hails from Charleston, S.C., but calls Bloomington home.

Robert Perdziola has designed sets and costumes for the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Stratford Shakespeare Festival, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Fort Worth Opera, Opera Boston, Glimmerglass, Manhattan School of Music, and The Juilliard School of Drama. Among these designs are Capriccio and Il Pirata for the Met, The Merry Wives of Windsor for Stratford, and Giulio Cesare for Fort Worth. Most recently, he designed The Nutcracker (sets and costumes) for the Boston Ballet. Perdziola received a 2008 Helpmann Award nomination in costume design for Arabella at the Sydney Opera House. In 2006, he designed costumes for the world premiere of David Carlson’s and Colin Graham’s new opera, Anna Karenina, performed at the Florida Grand Opera and Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. In the U.K., he has designed Le Nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte for the Garsington Opera. Other works in Europe include Così fan tutte (Opera Monte Carlo) and Gounod’s Faust (Niedersächsische Staatsoper Hannover). His designs for theatre are frequently featured at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C. Perdziola is the recipient of three Helen Hayes Awards for costume design (The Country Wife, Don Carlos, and Lady Windermere’s Fan) and the Irene Sharaff Young Master Award. Ballet designs include works for American Ballet Theatre, San Francisco Ballet, and Miami City Ballet. He is on the board of directors for The Tobin Foundation for Theatre Arts.

Eiddwen Harrhy’s singing career has taken her to many of the world’s leading opera houses and concert halls. Now her teaching is following a similar path, with master classes and one-to-one teaching around the world, including Prague, Vilnius, Stockholm, Berlin, Helsinki, Utrecht, Vienna, Bloomington, Cologne, and Singapore. Harrhy has been teaching at the Royal College of Music for over 10 years, with her studio including eminent singers and students in the U.K. as well as in Europe.

She has sung with major orchestras and opera companies around the world as well as in more than 20 Handel operas, from Amadigi to Tamerlano, and is regarded as one of the greatest Handel specialists of her generation. Her notable roles include Pamina, Michaela, Countess, Alcina, Poppea, Iphigenie, Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira, Octavian, Composer, Katya Kabanova, Madame Butterfly, and Marie (Wozzeck). Harrhy has worked with many of the great conductors, including Davis, Goodall, Solti, Haitink, Gardiner, Elder, Herreweghe, Norrington, Hickox, Jansons, Minkowski, Mackerras, Willcocks, Pritchard, Hogwood, and Marriner. Directors she has worked with include Peter Hall, Philip Prowse, Jonathan Miller, Richard Jones, Graham Vick, John Copley, John Cox, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Götz Friedrich, Anthony Besch, and Frank Corsar.

She has performed with the leading accompanists of her generation, including Geoffrey Parsons, Graham Johnson, Pascal Roge, Roger Vignoles, and Michael Pollock, appearing in Amsterdam, Athens, Buenos Aires, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Milan, Barcelona, Paris, Rome, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and Vienna. Festivals include Glyndebourne, Batignano, Edinburgh, Halle, Aldeburgh, Geneva, Bruges, Lucerne, and Hong Kong. She has made many notable appearances in the BBC Proms and many other broadcast concert performances in the U.K., United States, and Europe for both television and radio. Harrhy has recorded for EMI, Erato, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, Nimbus, Opera Rara, and Virgin Classics, among others. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Music and the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music by the University of Swansea, Wales.

Daniela Siena brings many years of experience in teaching Italian diction and language to singers. She was introduced to operatic diction by Boris Goldovsky, who was seeking a native speaker without teaching experience to work with singers according to his own pedagogical principles. Siena went on to teach in a number of operatic settings (among them, Curtis Institute of Music, Metropolitan Opera, New York City Opera, Seattle Opera). Over the years, she worked with a number of well-known singers, including Samuel Ramey, Justino Diaz, Carol Vaness, Wolfgang Brendel, June Anderson, Gianna Rolandi, and Jerry Hadley. The conductors, coaches, and stage directors with whom she has worked include Otto Guth, Max Rudolf, Edoardo Mueller, David Effron, Arthur Fagen, Anthony Pappano, Anthony Manoli, Terry Lusk, Dino Yannopoulos, Tito Capobianco, Andrei Șerban, John Cox, and John Copley. At New York City Opera, Siena worked closely with Beverly Sills—as her executive assistant, as a diction coach, and as the creator of English supertitles for a dozen operas. More recently, she worked for two years as a coach for the Young Artists Program of the Los Angeles Opera and, for the past six years, she has taught in Dolora Zajick’s summer Institute for Young Dramatic Voices. Born in Florence, Italy, to an Italian mother and a Russian émigré father, Siena arrived in the United States at age seven. She received a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and, in her twenties, worked for two years in Italy as secretary to the president of the Olivetti Company. Many years later, she continued her education, earned a master’s degree, and became licensed as a psychotherapist by the state of California, where she practiced for 15 years. The mother of two grown children, she moved to Bloomington to be near her son, who lives here with his wife and two young daughters.

Stage director Vincent Liotta has been both a professional stage director and a dedicated educator for more than 40 years. He is currently chair of the Opera Studies Department in the Jacobs School of Music, where he teaches stage directing, acting, and operatic literature. As a stage director, he has been involved in creating many world premiere productions. Most recently, he conceived and directed the much-acclaimed premiere of Vincent by composer Bernard Rands and librettist J.D. McClatchy for IU Opera Theater. Among other notable premieres in which he has taken a creative lead are Coyote Tales by Henry Mollicone and Too Many Sopranos by Jacobs composer Edwin Penhorwood. His professional projects have been seen on four continents—including Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Puccini’s La Bohème in Seoul, Korea; the eastern-European premiere of Bernstein’s Candide for the Romanian National Opera in Cluj-Napoca; Puccini’s Madama Butterfly for Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and La fanciulla del West at the Canadian National Opera in Toronto. Liotta’s operatic repertory covers the entire history of opera, from Cavalli to John Corigliano. In 1993, he co-founded the Utah Festival Opera. In addition to directing, he has authored and translated works for the musical theater, including a new libretto for Victor Herbert’s operetta, Naughty Marietta, and Viva Verdi, an original biographical evening about the life and work of Giuseppe Verdi. He has done new English translations for The Merry Wives of Windsor and Orlando Paladino in addition to a new libretto for The Merry Widow. For many years, Liotta has collaborated with Harold Prince on productions of Turandot and Don Giovanni, as well as on the world premiere of Willie Stark.

Soprano Shannon Love is in her third year of doctoral study at the Jacobs School of Music, where she earned her master’s degree as a Barbara and David Jacobs Fellow. She most recently performed the role of Violetta in last year’s production of La Traviata, as well as previously performing the roles of Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte), Lauretta (Gianni Schicchi), Cunégonde (Candide), and Queen Tye (Akhnaten) with IU Opera Theater. A native of Ponca City, Okla., she earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Oklahoma, performing the roles of Fiordiligi (Così fantutte), Sofia (Il Signor Bruschino), Périchole (La Périchole), Mrs. Gleaton (Susannah), and Mrs. Gobineau (The Medium). In November 2013, Love was a participant in the American Voices Festival and Master Class Series at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., hosted by Renée Fleming. In 2014, she won first place at the Tulsa District Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions, going on to take third place at the regional level. Last summer, she joined Des Moines Metro Opera as a young artist and most recently competed as a Ryan Opera Center finalist. Love is student of Costanza Cuccaro.

Elizabeth Toy, soprano, completed her master’s degree at Indiana University and is now in her final year of doctoral studies here. With IU Opera Theater, she performed Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, the title role in The Merry Widow, and Catherine in Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge. Toy performed the title role in Handel’s Esther as part of the Joshi Handel Project in Bloomington and Charleston, S.C. She received her Bachelor of Music from Michigan State University, where she performed roles with Michigan State Opera Theatre including Cunégonde in Candide and the title roles in Susannah and Roméo et Juliette. She has appeared as soloist with the Jackson Symphony’s Pops series, Lansing Symphony, Bloomington Chamber Singers, and IU’s Pro Arte Singers, Latin American Music Ensemble, and Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. Toy is the 2013 winner of the Kentucky Bach Choir Vocal Competition. In addition to performing, she enjoys music education, maintaining a part-time voice studio, teaching class voice through IU, and working as music director at Stages Bloomington Youth Theatre. She is a student of Costanza Cuccaro.

Monica Dewey, soprano, is from Atlanta, Ga. She is a first-year master’s student in voice studying with Carol Vaness, making her IU Opera Theater debut in Alcina. Dewey graduated with her dual bachelor’s degree in music and arts administration from the University of Kentucky. Upon completion of her degree, she entered the DeVos Institute of Arts Management in Washington, D.C., where she worked as an assistant to Washington National Opera’s Domingo Cafritz Young Artist Program. She was recently awarded first place in The American Prize Competition and was a recipient of the Arleen Auger Memorial Scholarship. Dewey has trained with Lyric Opera Studio Weimar in Weimar, Germany, and the Chautauqua Voice Institute in New York. Role and scene credits include Violetta in La Traviata, Musetta in La Bohème, Juliette in Roméo et Juliette, Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Rose in Street Scene, and Christine in Phantom of the Opera. She has been a featured soloist in concert with Thüringer Symphony in Germany, University of Kentucky Symphony Orchestra, and Atlanta Community Symphony Orchestra. This summer, Dewey will return to Chautauqua to perform Dalinda in Handel’s Ariodante.

A native of Atlanta, Ga., soprano Kellie Motter is a first-year master’s student at the Jacobs School of Music. Last spring, she completed her Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance at the University of Maryland, where she was a student of Delores Ziegler and Edward Maclary. Recent opera credits include the roles of Pamina (Die Zauberflöte) with Harrower Summer Opera and La Fée (Cendrillon) with the Siena Music Festival. Motter has been featured as a soloist in Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Bach’s Magnificat in D and in his solo cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen, BWV 51. Most recently, she appeared with the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra as the soprano soloist in Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem. A fan of contemporary music, she has premiered works with Washington, D.C.-based ensemble The Radical Sound and was a featured vocalist in Steve Reich’s Tehillim with the University of Maryland Wind Orchestra. Motter is a student of Carol Vaness.

Southern Californian Rachel K. Evans, mezzo-soprano, was seen last year as Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther on the IU mainstage. She appeared in the New Voices Opera production of Cosmic Ray and the Amazing Chris by Eric Lindsay, as well as in the Latin American Music Center’s Fifth Annual Latin Valentine Concert. Recently, she cofounded a new student group, the University Gilbert & Sullivan Society at Indiana University. In fall 2014, she coproduced the group’s first production, Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, in which she also sang the role of Queen of the Fairies. Evans is enjoying her second year performing with Reimagining Opera for Kids with a new opera, Chappell Kingsland’s The Firebringers, being performed at local K-12 schools. She has sung alongside Sylvia McNair at several recitals in Bloomington, including benefit concerts for the Shalom Community Center. Performance highlights at UCLA, where she earned her B.A. and M.M. degrees, include Zita (Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi), La Badessa and La Maestra delle Novizie (Puccini’s Suor Angelica), Dorabella (Mozart’s Così fan tutte), Nancy (Britten’s Albert Herring), L’Enfant and L’Ecureuil (Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges), and Ramiro (Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera). Evans also appeared with Lyric Opera of Los Angeles as Armelinde (Viardot’s Cendrillon) and Suse Blunt (Marschner’s Der Vampyr) and with Opera of the Foothills as Orlofsky (J. Strauss’s Die Fledermaus). Evans is in her third year of doctoral studies at IU studying with Patricia Havranek.

Kaitlyn McMonigle is a first-year master’s student in voice performance at Indiana University, where she studies with Robert Harrison. She recently appeared in the chorus of this season’s La Bohème. In 2013, she attended the Houston Grand Opera Young Artist Vocal Academy as well as the Chautauqua Music Festival Vocal Program, where she played Sister Mathilde in Dialogues of the Carmelites. This summer, she will be participating in the Wolf Trap Opera Studio. McMonigle grew up in Ocala, Fla., and received her Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance at Florida State University in 2014. In 2012 and 2013, she won first place at the National Association of Teachers of Singing Southeast Regional Audition. She has performed extensively with Central Florida Lyric Opera in a variety of concerts, dinner shows, operas, and operettas with roles that have included Kate Pinkerton in Madama Butterfly, Despina in Così fan tutte, and Rosina in The Barber of Seville. She has also studied with Sherrill Milnes at VoicExperience in Orlando, Fla., and is an alumna of the Boston University Tanglewood Institute Voice Program.

Tenor Issa Ransom is from the Bronx, New York City, and is delighted to be making his IU Opera Theater debut. He is in pursuit of a Master of Music in Voice Performance and has studied with tenors Paul Elliot and Brian Horne. He earned his Bachelor of Music in Voice Performance at Lawrence University, where he studied with Steven Paul Spears. While at Lawrence, he was heard as a soloist in J.S. Bach’s Cantata BWV 191, Lully’s Te Deum, and Handel’s Messiah, and performed the title role in Britten’s Albert Herring.

Tenor Christopher Sokołowski is a native of New York’s Hudson Valley and has performed a wide repertoire of both concert and operatic works. At Indiana University, he has performed the role of Thiên Sĩ in the world premiere of P.Q. Phan’s The Tale of Lady Thi Kính, Handel’s Esther, and, most recently, Britten’s War Requiem. In concert, he has sung Orff’s Carmina Burana, Vaughan Williams’ On Wenlock Edge, Handel’s Messiah, Weber’s Jubelmesse, the Magnificats of J.S. Bach, J.C. Bach, and Vivaldi, Mendelssohn’s Elijah, Mozart’s Requiem, Vivaldi’s Dixit Dominus, and Haydn’s Missa in tempore belli, among others. In the summer of 2013, he was an artist with the Lyric Opera Studio of Weimar, Germany, where he performed the role of Tamino (Die Zauberflöte) and sang with the Thüringer Symphoniker under the baton of Oliver Weder. Other operatic roles include Alfred (Die Fledermaus), Le Mari (Les mamelles de Tirésias), Witch (Hansel and Gretel), and Remendado (Carmen). He has been a featured artist with the Phoenicia International Festival of the Voice for several summers, most recently singing a concert of baroque repertoire with countertenor Brian Asawa. In November 2014, he received the Albert Rees Davis Scholarship as a winner of the S. Livingston Mather Scholarship Competition. Sokołowski earned his B.M. magna cum laude from SUNY Purchase in 2013 and is currently an associate instructor of voice at Indiana University, where he is pursuing his master’s degree in the studio of Timothy Noble.

Baritone Eunje Cho, a native of South Korea, is currently pursuing a Performer Diploma in Voice at the Jacobs School of Music, where he studies with Carol Vaness. He earned a Bachelor of Music at Korea National University of Arts. He has appeared in La Traviata at Indiana University, as Papageno and Armored Man in Die Zauberflöte with Chicago Summer Opera, Japanese Soldier in Heart of a Hero at the Philadelphia Constitution Center, and Il Marito in Amelia Goes to the Ball in Carol Vaness’s Opera Workshop. He was a featured soloist in Mozart’s Mass in C Major, Haydn’s Die Schöpfung, Dubois’ The Seven Last Words of Christ, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah.

Ross Coughanour is a baritone from Santaquin, Utah. He graduated with a B.A. in Vocal Performance from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 2013. While at BYU, he performed such roles as Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Ben in Menotti’s The Telephone, Guglielmo in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Dr. Stone in Menotti’s Help, Help, The Globolinks!, Somarone and Leonato in Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénédict, and the Duke of Plazatoro in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Gondoliers. Outside of school, Coughanour playedthe Marquiz in Verdi’s La Traviata and Uncle Bonze in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly with Utah Lyric Opera, and Edwin in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Trial by Jury with Snow College Opera. At IU, he has been featured as Mang Ong in the world premiere of P.Q. Phan’s The Tale of Lady Thi Kính and as Marcello in Puccini’s La Bohème. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree at IU, studying with Carlos Montané.

Michael Linert, countertenor, has previously appeared with IU Opera Theater as Arsamenes in Handel’s Xerxes. He has also appeared on the operatic stage as the Sorcerer and Spirit in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, White Cat and Squirrel in Ravel’s L’enfant et les sortilèges, and Mister Moon in the world premiere of Sheridan’s The Curious Light of Mister Moon. Linert recently appeared as alto soloist in J.S. Bach’s Magnificat with Northminster Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis and will perform as a soloist and section member with Ensemble Lipzodes at the XIV International Sacred Music Festival in Quito, Ecuador. Linert completed his bachelor’s degree in cello performance at the Hartt School summa cum laude and his Master of Science in Music Education at Indiana University. He is currently in his first year of the performer diploma program for voice as a student of Patricia Stiles.

Mezzo-soprano/contralto Deniz Uzun was raised in Mannheim, Germany, and earned her Bachelor of Voice from the University of Music Karlsruhe and Mannheim. Before and during her studies there, she performed at the National Theatre Mannheim. In addition to earning several awards and prizes, she performed at the Young Artists Program of the Baden-Baden Easter Festival in two productions, Pauline Viardot’s Cendrillon (Armelinde) and W.A. Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte (Third Maid) with the Berliner Philharmoniker. Uzun performed at IU as the Mother (Gertrude) in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and as Isabella in Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri. Since the beginning of her studies, she has been supported by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and the Richard Wagner Foundation. She is the 2014-15 recipient of the Georgina Joshi Graduate Fellowship. Uzun is an Artist Diploma student at the Jacobs School of Music, where she has studied with Andreas Poulimenos and Carol Vaness. Uzun recently won the regional finals of the Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in Chicago and will participate in the semi-finals in March at the Met. Future engagements include performing the role of Annina in La Traviata in Baden-Baden in May with Olga Peretyatko and Rolando Villazón. She has been accepted to the Opera Studio of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich for 2015-16.

Soprano Emma Donahue is a native of Vinalhaven, Maine. At age 8, she premiered the role of the Migratory Bird in William Bolcom’s The Wind in the Willows and at age 12, appeared as a soloist in the musical Islands on Broadway. She earned her Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where her operatic credits include Adina (Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore), Belinda (Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas), Adele (Strauss’s Die Fledermaus), Nannetta (Verdi’s Falstaff), and Violetta (Verdi’s La Traviata). Internationally, she has performed Ismene in Mozart’s Mitridate in Melbourne and Musetta in La Bohème at Opera on the Avalon in Newfoundland. Donahue debuted last year as Queen of the Night in IU Opera Theater’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute. Other IU credits include Lisette (Puccini’s La Rondine), Suor Genovieffa (Puccini’s Suor Angelica), and Nella (Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi) with the Vaness Opera Workshop, as well as appearances in Menotti’s The Last Savage and P.Q. Phan’s The Tale of Lady Thi Kính. As a concert soloist, she has sung in Bach’s Magnificat and Mozart’s Requiem with the University Singers, Beethoven’s Mass in C Major with the University Chorale, and Barber’s Knoxville: Summer of 1915 with the IU Summer Philharmonic. She currently holds the position of soprano soloist for the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s Discovery Concert Series. An IU Artistic Excellence Award recipient, Donahue is pursuing a Master of Music degree as a student of Carol Vaness.

Soprano Madeline Ley is completing her master’s degree at the Jacobs School of Music. Originally from Elkton, Md., she earned her B.M. in Voice Performance from Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. While there, Ley was a soloist with the Wheaton College Concert Choir in Mozart’s Requiem and Aaron Copland’s In the Beginning. She was also involved in the opera program at Wheaton, where she sang the role of Hansel in Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel and sang in Mozart opera scenes as Pamina in Die Zauberflöte, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Zerlina from Don Giovanni. In summer of 2011, Ley studied opera at the Manhattan School of Music, where she sang inthe scenes program as Mercedes from Carmen and Third Lady from Die Zauberflöte. Before finishing her undergraduate studies, she studied abroad with Oberlin in Italy, where she sang the scenes of the role of Zenobia from Handel’s Radamisto and in the chorus of Puccini’s La Bohème. At IU, she has performed as Kätchen in Massanet’s Werther and in the chorus for P.Q. Phan’s The Tale of Lady Thi Kính, Puccini’s La Bohème, and Mozart’s The Magic Flute. She is a student of Timothy Noble.

Chelsea DeLorenz is a mezzo-soprano from Garland, Texas, in her second year of graduate studies under the tutelage of Patricia Stiles. She previously attended The University of Texas at Austin, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with degrees in both Spanish and voice performance. This past summer, DeLorenz performed the title role in Massenet’s Cendrillon with the Miami Summer Music Festival. Other recent credits include the roles of Ruth (Pirates of Penzance) with the University Gilbert & Sullivan Society, Hansel (Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel), and Susanna Walcott (Ward’s The Crucible).

Mezzo-soprano Marianthi Hatzis is pursuing her Bachelor of Music degree at the Jacobs School of Music. She is a recipient of the Dean’s Scholarship and studies with Patricia Stiles. Hatzis has appeared with IU Opera Theater as Zulma in Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri and Liat in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. She has performed the role of Second Woman and was the understudy of Dido in Dido and Aeneas with Lefkas Music in Lefkada, Greece. Additionally, she has appeared with New Voices Opera in its Fall Exhibition as the title mezzo role in Kimberly Osberg’s opera Thump. She has also performed in the Jacobs School of Music’s Summer Opera Workshop as Poppea in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea and Giannetta in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore. Hatzis has appeared as a soloist in IU’s contemporary vocal ensemble NOTUS, University Singers, and Conductors’ Chorus, and was a member of Eric Whitacre’s Chicago premiere of Paradise Lost: Shadows and Wings.She won first place in the Indianapolis Matinee Musicale Competition and first place in the Fourth-Year College Women division of the Indiana National Association of Teachers of Singing Chapter. She has performed for audiences such as the Metropolitan Iakovos of Chicago and the Greek Archdiocese of Chicago. She will be singing in the Young Artist Program of SongFest this May with a full- tuition scholarship. A native of Greece, she lives in Chicago and plans to continue her studies in Europe this coming year.

Andres Acosta is a first-year graduate student at the Jacobs School of Music studying with Carlos Montané. Acosta, a Miami, Fla., native, earned his undergraduate degree from Florida State University as a part of David Okerlund’s studio. He made his IU Opera debut as Alfred in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus earlier this season. He has recently portrayed the roles of Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Sellem in Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, Don Ottavio in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, and Sam Kaplan in Kurt Weill’s Street Scene. Acosta was awarded the Judy George Junior Young Artist First Prize Award in the 2015 Young Patronesses of the Opera Voice Competition. He was nominated as 2014 Humanitarian of the Year at Florida State University and is recognized as a Brautlecht Estate Endowed and Music Guild Scholar.

Baritone Benjamin Seiwert is a senior pursuing a B.M. in Voice Performance at Indiana University. While at IU, he has performed the roles of The Painter and English Tailor in The Last Savage by Menotti and The Motorcycle Cop in Dead Man Walking by Heggie. He has also performed the roles of Lord Tolloller from Iolanthe and Samuel from The Pirates of Penzance with the University Gilbert & Sullivan Society. Seiwart has sung in several opera choruses, including Massanet’s Cendrillon, Verdi’s Falstaff, Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, Rossini’s L’Italiani in Algeri, Menotti’s The Last Savage, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific. He is a student of Patricia Stiles.

Tenor Darian Clonts, a native of Atlanta, Ga., is in the final year of his Master of Music in Voice Performance degree at the Jacobs School of Music. He made his debut with IU Opera Theater singing the role of Parpignol in the 2014 production of Puccini’s La Bohème. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 2012 from Morehouse College in Atlanta, Ga., where he studied voice with Uzee Brown Jr. In 2011, Clonts was awarded second place in the vocal solo competition of the Metropolitan Atlanta Musicians Association’s branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians. He joined The Atlanta Opera for the 2012-13 season and performed in its productions of Bizet’s Carmen, Verdi’s La Traviata, and Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri. He attended the Princeton Festival in the summer of 2014, where he performed in Porgy and Bess as a member of the chorus and a soloist. Clonts previously performed in the IU Opera Theater production of The Last Savage as Scientist. He also has previously appeared at IU in Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algeri, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Strauss’s Die Fledermaus as a member of the chorus. He performed the role of Bob Boles in Britten’s Peter Grimes in opera workshop under the direction of Carol Vaness and is a student of Brian Horne.

Tenor Max Zander is in the second year of his master’s degree studies. During his tenure at IU, he has appeared as Dr. Blind in Strauss’s Die Fledermaus, Basilio in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, Bardolfo in Verdi’s Falstaff, Njegus in Lehár’s The Merry Widow, Rabbi in Menotti’s The Last Savage, Modiste/Liveryman in Massanet’s Cendrillon, and various characters in Candide as well as in the choruses of numerous other productions. Zander has also appeared as Prunier in Puccini’s La Rondine with Carol Vaness’s Graduate Opera Workshop and as Tolloller in the University Gilbert & Sullivan Society’s inaugural production of Iolanthe. His other operatic credits include Nemorino in Donizetti’s L’Elisir d’Amore with the Montefeltro Festival in Italy, Flute in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Monostatos in Mozart’s The Magic Flute with the Halifax Summer Opera Festival in Canada, and Borsa in Rigoletto with the North Shore Music Festival. As a festival artist with Utah Festival Opera & Musical Theatre, Zander sang the roles of Parpignol in Puccini’s La Bohème and Anselmo in Man of La Mancha. He covered the roles of Sancho in Man of La Mancha and J.Pierrepont Finch in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying. He will return to the MAC stage for Oklahoma!, his sixteenth IU Opera production. He is a native of Great Neck, N.Y., and is currently a student of Patricia Stiles.