Great art starts with belief, is fueled by passion, and relies on technique and focus to bring it to fruition.

I am often asked how we go about planning a season and deciding on the titles we will present. The logistical and financial considerations are complex but less interesting, so let’s focus on the artistic factors involved.

I start with belief: by choosing pieces that I believe to be powerful, magical, and truthful; work that inspires me, moves me, and says something important. But also, work about which we have something new or interesting to say that will inspire and move others. This might be a new way of looking at the story, a role debut for an important artist, the presentation of a work in a different kind of venue, or simply an entirely new piece. Finding the ‘new’ in repertoire that is often hundreds of years old can be challenging, but the universal message of great art finds fresh relevance with each news cycle.

2025 is a dream season for me — and I hope also for you. Three great acknowledged masterpieces, two company premieres, and a major world premiere which brings a classic, beloved novel to pulsing theatrical life for the first time, all given fascinating, thought-provoking new productions and designed by a great master of his art. It’s a season I personally cannot wait to see, and you can rest assured I will sit through every performance this season with delight. But what is it about the way we will present these titles that I feel brings something new to the table?

A New Perspective

While it would be folly for Glimmerglass to try to emulate the verisimilitude of the Met’s massive recreations of Tosca’s Church of Sant’Andrea della Valle, Palazzo Farnese, or the Castel Sant’Angelo, we can probe the deeper meaning of this revolutionary story about the abuse of power with a sharp, insightful mind like Louisa Proske’s behind the production; involving our community in its telling will only enhance the immediacy of its warning.

While A Little Night Music and Sweeney Todd have been presented regularly in opera houses, Sunday in the Park with George is arguably more groundbreaking but requires a little extra effort to bring off in a venue like ours; I want to prove that this masterpiece, which forever changed our expectations of what was possible on Broadway, is entirely at home in an opera house — it is a seminal piece of American theater.

The Rake’s Progress is packed with music full of movement, propulsion, gesture, and shape — with our brilliant ensemble of young artists, so capable both physically and vocally, and a multitalented director and choreographer like our Head of Stage Movement, Eric Sean Fogel, we can fully represent this fundamental aspect of the piece.

Of course, The House on Mango Street is new in every way, but it also points directly to where I feel American theater is heading — to the great synthesis of opera and musical theater that Gershwin, Weill, Bernstein, and Sondheim all yearned for, and a sense of style which fully reflects today’s multicultural world.

Where Culture is heading

I came into this position armed with a voraciously eclectic love for the standard repertoire, a resume stacked with commissions and new works, and a passion for sharing great art. I saw in Glimmerglass a perfect, ideally sized theater, an artistic community comprised of some of the industry’s most brilliant talents in every discipline, and a discerning audience always hungry for discovery, discussion, and quality.

I feel Glimmerglass is unique because we can make intimate chamber works (like La Calisto and Elizabeth Cree) feel truly operatic in scale; because we can make the most lavish grand operas (like Pagliacci and La bohème) feel personal and detailed; because we are committed to presenting all four plus centuries of the artform; because we treat the worlds of opera and musical theater with equal reverence and respect; and because we insist on theater as a total experience, valuing the physical, the dramatic, and the visual, the musical, the vocal, and the social in equal measure.

I believe this is where culture is heading — into a space without hard stylistic boundaries and definitions, bursting with truly global influences, where every element of our experience is valued, where everyone can feel welcome and represented, and where the works of 2025 are just as likely to be as revelatory, accessible, and immediate as those of 1825 or 1625. We live in a time when we have access to the totality of recorded history with the click of a mouse, and information from every corner of the globe streams constantly through our devices; where memes of Moo Deng play next to clips of Martha Argerich on my phone, and I can see in real time what friends halfway around the world are having for breakfast.

Our stages must reflect the world we live in today as much as they remind us of our past. A Glimmerglass season covers this gamut, offering so much opportunity to truly dig into each piece and come away with a deepened understanding of what you have experienced. But we also push theater’s boundaries, moving the artform forward with works like Blue and The House on Mango Street, expanding the canon with pieces like Lost in the Stars and Sunday in the Park with George, and rediscovering masterpieces like Rinaldo and La Calisto through modern interpretations.

My recent travels have allowed me to take in the Met’s productions of Tosca and Ainadamar, as well as American Lyric Theater’s orchestral workshop of a new piece by Alex Weiser and Stephanie Fleischmann called Tevye’s Daughters, conducted by Glimmerglass alum and last year’s maestro for Elizabeth Cree, Kelly Kuo. These three performances all point to the astonishing breadth of experience and storytelling that is happening in today’s opera world, and which Glimmerglass should fully embrace.

Making great theater

I said earlier that great art starts with belief, is fueled by passion, and relies on technique and focus to bring it to fruition. We are in the throes of passion right now, pushing ideas around, hearing auditions, massaging scores and designs, and raising money. Once rehearsals begin in May, technique, focus, and execution will take over, until you all join the process, and we come together as a community to make great theater.

This year, while we celebrate our fifty glorious years on the lake, we also look to the future — of Glimmerglass, and of the art form itself. As I sit down to my Thanksgiving table this Thursday, I will be grateful to all of you and for all the unique talents who make this place such a beacon for great art. From where I sit, and with your help, Glimmerglass’s future is very bright and blindingly colorful … as long as we believe in it!

Happy Thanksgiving!